Alaia Skyhawk: And here is part 5! Oh, and I'll be fixing a diologue plothole in this one. Tooth says "seven continents", but if you go with the typical list of Australia, South America, North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Antarctica... Only six of those have people living on them. I discount Antarctica, because all that's really there is research outposts where you wouldn't typically find any kids. So yeah, Tooth's line is a bit inaccurate hehehe :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.

~(-)~

Chapter 57: Rise of the Guardians ~Part 5~

For several moments they stood there in silence. Partly in shock at all that had happened so suddenly, and partly because they were at a loss as to how to respond. They'd been caught off guard in addition to being tricked, and now they'd have to scramble to pick up the pieces.

Perhaps if they'd been less sceptical about Pitch making a return, that wouldn't have been the case.

Bunny sat down on his haunches, sombre as he watched Tooth land at the edge of her pond and stare at an empty tooth box she'd picked up.

"I'll admit it, North, you were right about Pitch."

The Russian sighed, shaking his head as he paced.

"This is one time I wish I was wrong. But he will pay. We will make sure of that."

Jack listened to them with a heavy heart, feeling a burden of guilt which he knew Sandy would scold him for. The knowledge that, had he not been hiden away, he could have prevented this... It was almost too much to bear. And so he went over to Tooth, and lay a hand in support on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, about the fairies."

She glanced at him, bleak.

"You should've seen them. They put up such a fight."

Baby Tooth buzzed around both their heads, landing on his hand when he held it up for her.

"He took them for the memories, didn't he. It isn't just about starting a Belief Blackout, it's about making it as hard as possible for us to stop it from continuing and getting worse... He went after you, because you were the most vulnerable Guardian whose work takes place every day. Your fairies, which are your greatest strength..."

She nodded.

"Are also my greatest weakness. Take them away, and I don't just lose my assistants, I also lose a part of myself. They're an extention of me. Without them I feel so... lost."

Baby Tooth left Jack's hand and flew to snuggle against the side of Tooth's Face. By irony he'd saved one of her Lead Fairies, the tiny number who had a golden crest on their heads like she did. They were the original six 'mini fairies' that she'd started out with, before she'd eventually split herself into the vast multitude she had now. It was small comfort for her, but it was something.

Baby Tooth's encouragement got Tooth up off the floor and flying again, but the group remained uncertain of what move to make next, until she gasped as several of her feathers fell out.

She turned, gazing at the mural above the pond, and as they all watched the painting began to degrade just like the palace had up above.

"Oh no... The Children! We're too late!"

North strode forward, shaking his head vehemently.

"No! No! No such thing as too late!" He resumed his pacing, sword-holding hands up by his head as he rattled fingers on their hilts. "Wait... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Idea! HAHH!" North pointed his swords at Sandy and Bunny, the latter forced to lean backwards when one of them came within an inch of his head. "We will collect the teeth!"

"What?"

At Tooth's exclamation, North faced her bold and confident.

"We get teeth! Children keep believing, in you!"

She fluttered over to him.

"We're talking six continents! Millions of kids!"

North waved a hand and scoffed at that.

"Give me break! You know how many toys I deliver in one night?"

"And eggs I hide in one day?"

Bunny came forward now, picking up on the fighting spirit as Tooth glanced at everyone else. After Sandy and Nightlight both gave a thumbs-up, Jack nodded as well.

"I'm in."

~(-)~

"Quickly! Quickly!"

North's booming laughter echoed across the rooftops of Moscow, as he poofed in and out of chimneys at an eager pace. Bunny was racing across them on foot, bounding from roof-to-roof in great leaps, while the fliers in the group zipped here and there following every called out-direction Tooth made.

After the first five minutes, Jack glided down to sweep in alongside Bunny, grinning like this was the greatest game ever invented.

"Hop to it rabbit, I'm five teeth ahead!"

Bunny glanced at him, but didn't stop running.

"Yeah right, look, I'd tell you to stay outta my way, but really what's the point? Because you won't be able to keep up anyway."

Jack's grin widened.

"Is that a challenge, cottontail?"

Bunny started to smile as well.

"Oh, you don't wanna race a rabbit, mate."

The Pooka put on a burst of speed, streaking away from Jack. Meanwhile North, who had heard the conversation, continued to poof in and out of chinmeys with his words coming between each one.

"A race? Is it a race?" Thud poof. "This is going to be-" Thud poof. "EPIC!"

Half a block away, as Jack caught up with her, Tooth was darting about extremely fast with her head turning to look at all the bright lights, traffic, and just the sheer size of they city. In short, she was also talking even faster than normal, and twitched with the energy and excitement of a dozen five-year-olds on a major sugar rush.

"Four bicuspids over there! An incisor two blocks east! Is that a molar? They're EVERYWHERE!" She turned sharply, flying at full speed without pausing to look where she was going, and as a result smacked face-first into a billboard. "Ow!"

Jack landed on top of it, fighting not to laugh.

"Ummm, you okay?"

Tooth, holding a hand to her nose and pretty much cross-eyed, shook her head to get her bearings and darted up to where he was. She was still twitching and looking around, completely hyperactive.

"Fine...Sorry, it's just been a really long time since I've been out in the field."

Jack raised his eyebrows.

"How long is a long time?"

She shrugged, grinning.

"Ah, four hundred forty years...Give or take."

She twitched again, head feathers fluffed out as she spotted another tooth under a pillow, and pointed to it in glee before dashing for it at such speed she almost blew Jack off the top of the billboard.

He then glanced at Baby Tooth, who cringed in embarrassment and shrugged as if to say 'Yeah, she gets like this sometimes'.

Two minutes later and they were in another city, scouring it for yet more teeth while Nightlight and Jack split off to take care of the smaller towns and villages in the surrounding countryside. Jack was keeping them both stocked with coins, pilfered at regular intervals from the Tooth Palace using an Ice Mirror now that he'd been there. The density of teeth to collect was smaller, but they were the fastest fliers and able to cover the greatest distance. Chances were they'd bring in just as many teeth as the others did from the cities.

Within an hour and a half they continued westwards to Europe. Nightlight and Jack split off again, to take care of Africa with its lower concentration of people, and in the meantime a fierce competition had sprung up between North, Bunny, and Sandy.

Burrows placed to trip the others up, prank messages left for the Pooka to find, fireplaces lit so that North would get a surprise if he went down the chimney above them... And, of course, Sandy swooping in whenever North and Bunny were too distracted by each other to notice the little golden man taking the tooth they were after until it was too late to stop him flying off with it.

Tooth was oblivious to all that, too absorbed in flying through the glass of windows. Using the magic she'd invested in her fairies at the advent of better locks on windows, but had never actually used herself. She nearly hit several windowframes in her enthusiasm, giggling like a schoolgirl as she retrieved teeth from under pillows and left conjured coins behind.

Somewhere in the middle of France, at a point where they'd gained a fair bit of time ahead of the dawn, Tooth stuck her hand under a pillow and came out holding a mouse by its tail. She blinked in confusion, barely having time to register what was going on, before Baby Tooth dived in and kicked the creature out of her grasp.

As the little fairy then began to beat up the 'intruder tooth thief', Tooth quickly grabbed her by the wings and pulled her away from the rodent.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Take it easy there, champ! He's one of us!" She winced apologetically, her latter query directed at the mouse. "Part of the European division. Ça va?"

The mouse shook a paw at her, taking off the little green hat with yellow feather that it wore, and throwing it on the floor angrily. It took her a full minute to calm the fellow down, before she dashed off to inform the others that they could ignore France. She'd see about getting the teeth the mice collected, from the central retrieval points once Pitch had been dealt with.

Iceland came after the remainder of Europe, with Jack briefly joining in the 'get the most teeth' game. He scored three teeth off of Bunny after icing over the roof beneath him on all three occations, to make him slip and drop them before they could be put in his sack. After Iceland and a few other pockets of people on the path over the landmasses north of the Atlantic, they arrived in America with dawn now three hours behind them.

Tooth called a quick break at that point, gathering them all on a rooftop in New York, and all five of them held up their red sacks of teeth with great pride.

Tooth fluttered in glee, overwhelmed by their efforts.

"Wow! You guys collect teeth and leave gifts as fast as my fairies." North, Bunny, and Sandy all lowered theirs a little, eyes widening in realisation, and she stared. "You guys have been leaving gifts, right?"

Jack and Nightlight reached into pockets to reveal handfuls of coins, while the other three winced at their mistake. What followed was the Spirit of Winter pilfering yet more coins from the Tooth Palace, this time to give to the competitive trio. Those three then backtracked to Moscow and scrambled around to leave coins at all the places they'd missed, cutting it down to the wire as daylight broke in those regions.

Tooth, Nightlight, and Jack concentrated on South America while waiting for them to catch up again, and then they resumed their passage west across North America once the group had met up once more. There was one town Jack was really looking forward to reaching, as their varied laughter in thwarting Pitch's efforts spurred them all on.

But they did not notice they were being watched; a Nightmare observing their passage as they rode the sleigh through one of North's portals. The creature whinied in rage before rearing and descending from the rooftops, to where it then plunged into the shadows of a drain and slipped through the fabric of reality to the shadows within Pitch's lair.

The Nightmare King was stood by his own 'globe of belief', which consisted of little more than jagged shapes of rusted metal in the form of the continents. Suspended in the shape of a sphere, with nothing apparent holding them up. He paced around it, glaring at the glittering golden lights that still covered it. The Blackout that had started in Australia and China, and the other Eastern Nations... had not spread. Those areas were dimishished in numbers of believers, but everywhere west of that the lights stubbornly refused to fade.

"The lights... Why aren't they going out?!" The Nightmare landed beside him, snorting in agitation as it relayed what it had seen. "They're collecting the teeth?"

In the many cages suspended up above, the captured fairies heard his words and started to chirp and whistle excitedly.

He snarled at them.

"Oh pipe down, or I'll stuff a pillow with you!"

They quietened, but only a little much to his frustration. He then turned to the Nightmare and glared at it, scaring it to the point it collapsed into black sand.

He swirled a bit of it around in his grasp, shaping it into a darkened image of The Sandman.

"Fine, have your last hurrah... For tomorrow, all you pathetic scrambling will be for nothing."

He crushed the image to dust.

~(-)~

Jack was practically dancing in the air with glee when they finally reached Burgess, whooping as he dashed ahead. He waved eagerly for Tooth to follow him, and without any directions from her he headed straight to a house located near the pond at the edge of Jackswood Park.

Tooth watched as he expertly opened the window, which seemed to have a catch on it that could be opened from the outside if you knew exactly how. And then he waved her to follow him in, and went to sit on the stool at the bedside of the boy within.

Jamie was fast asleep, as was to be expected given Sandy always targeted the kids who had teeth under pillows. The light of his robot was on, acting as a nightlight, and as Tooth reached for and touched the tooth under his pillow, a wry smile came to her face at the memory most recently tied to it.

"Left central incisor, knocked out in a freak sledding accident." She glanced at the Spirit of Winter opposite her. "I wonder how that could have happened, Jack?"

Jack laughed, inclining his head towards the drawing of the incident which was pinned on the wall.

"Kids, huh?"

Tooth smiled, flipping a dollar coin over her fingers before slipping it under the pillow. She then fluttered up into the air, having calmed down now from her earlier exuberance, and watched the boy sleep.

"This was always the part I liked most; seeing the kids." She sighed. "Why did I ever stop doing this?"

Jack's expression softened.

"It's a little different up close, huh?"

She glanced at him, voice hushed so as not to wake the child.

"Thanks for being here, Jack. I wish we could have known about you sooner. You've made a real difference today."

Jack stood, his smile fading a little.

"Yeah well, what's done is done. Look, let's just get you taken care of. Then it's Pitch's turn."

There was a sudden commotion at the window, with a loud clatter of sabre-sheathes hitting the window frame as North squeezed his bulk through the opening. Sandy, Nightlight, and Baby Tooth followed him in, as the Russian whispered after Tooth shushed him firmly and pointed at the sleeping boy.

"Here you are! What gives slowpokes!?" He glanced at Tooth. "How you feeling, Toothy?"

She grinned, flying up to him.

"Believed in."

North laughed quietly.

"That's what I want to hear."

"Oh I see how it is..." Bunny's ears poked up from the burrow that had appeared through the floorboards, and the Pooka jumped up into the room. "All working together to make sure the rabbit gets last place."

"SSSHHHHHHHHH!"

Jack rolled his eyes, sauntering up to Bunny and holding up his sack of teeth.

"You think I need help to beat a bunny? Check it out, Peter Cottontail."

Bunny scoffed and held up his own slightly larger bag.

"You call that a bag of choppers? Now that's a bag of choppers."

North stepped between them to break up the brewing argument.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! This is about Tooth. It's not a competition! But if it was," he swung his massive sack over his shoulder and onto the floor in front of him. "I win! YEEEEEHAAAHH!"

In his exuberance he forgot to keep his voice down, resulting in his victory cheer rousing the child in the bed. A fact that was signalled by the group of Guardians being subject to the glare of the boy's flashlight.

Jamie stared at them in surprise, his expression becoming one of awe as he recognised each one of them in turn. But the names by which he called them, were one the ones that half of them expected him to say.

"Nicholas St North? E. Aster Bunnymund? Toothiana?" Jamie gasped at who he saw next. "Sandy! Nightlight!"

Jack chuckled and peered out from behind North.

"Don't forget me, kiddo."

"Uncle Jack!"

Jamie scrambled out from under his covers and threw himself at the Spirit of Winter, as in the meantime Tooth, Bunny, and North all stared.

North pointed at the boy who was now hugging Jack.

"You're his uncle?"

Jack smirked.

"Well, we shorten it to that. I'm actually his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-gr eat-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncl e. The Bennetts are descended from my sister."

He took Jamie back over to the bed and set him down, while Bunny took over at doing the pointing.

"So you told him all our names?"

Jamie tilted his head, frowing a little.

"No. I learnt from them Ombric."

As Tooth, Bunny, and North all went wide-eyed and stunned, Jack shrugged.

"What can I say? I take them to Santoff Claussen for regular visits. Jamie and his sister spend almost all of their school holidays at the village, so naturally they know a lot about you."

He used his thumb to point at the wall behind him, and the obvious drawings of Ombric, Katherine and Kailash, Nightlight, Big Root, and several other things and people from in or around Santoff Claussen. The wall was practically covered in them, had the others actually looked at and noticed them.

It was startling for them to see, but they didn't really have time to dwell on what they'd just learnt. With that in mind, Bunny nudged Sandy.

"As interesting as this is, we don't have time for chit chat. Sandy, knock him out so we can get going." Sandy nodded, and jokingly punched a fist into his other hand causing Bunny to gape. "With the dreamsand, you gumbie!"

His advance towards the bed roused the dog asleep on the floor beside it. Abby rising to her feet behind Sandy to growl at Bunny over the top of the little man's head.

Jamie gasped, and reached out towards her.

"No, stop that's the Easter Bunny. What are you doing, Abby? Down!"

The dog was now nose-to-nose with Bunny, who carefully gestured with a paw for them to stay where they were.

"Alright, nobody panic."

Jack started to chuckle wickedly.

"But that's a um, that's a greyhound. Do you know what greyhounds do to rabbits?"

Bunny remained tense, while Sandy rolled his eyes and conjured a ball of dreamsand in preparation.

"I think it's a pretty safe bet he's never met a rabbit like me. Six foot one, nerves of steel, master of tai-chi and the ancient art of- Crikey!"

Jack had tapped the nearby alarmclock with his staff, setting it and Abby off. The dog leapt at Bunny, proceeding to chase him around the small room while Sandy did his best to try and aim at the rampagine canine. In the moments that followed, Sandy fumbled the dreamsand and unintentionally sent it rebounding around the room. The result?

Tooth and Baby Tooth, Bunny, and North all sound asleep slumped in various positions around or on Jamie's bed, and Abby was knocked out close to the door. Jamie was then added to that, belatedly, as Jack crouched on the edge of the dresser fighting to hold in his laughter.

He watched as one of the carrots over Bunny's head, took hold of one of North's candy canes and started doing a dance.

"Oh I really wish I had a camera right now."

Nightlight just shook his head in amusement at that, while Sandy went to give Jack a long look. But his expression froze, his gaze on the window, and both of the others turned and saw the Nightmare that peered in at them.

Jack and Nightlight were out the window in an instant, the former calling out.

"Sandy, c'mon! We can find Pitch."

Sandy hesitated, glancing at the sleeping trio of his fellows, before shaking his head to himself and gliding out the window. He hadn't hit them with a strong dose of dreamsand, so added to the fact that they were immortals, they'd wake up in a couple of minutes on their own.

Just after he left, the door of Jamie's room opened. A certain two-year-old wandering having heard the ruckus.

Sophie, still wearing her slightly tatty fairy wings, giggled at the pile of sleeping Legends. she was too young to understand how strange it was for them to be there, and tried to clamber up onto the bed. But instead of sitting on the covers, she slipped. Pulling on North's coat, and ending up holding the snowglobe that tumbled from one of his pockets.

After giggle of 'Easter Bunny! Hop hop hop!' and a tumble over a sleeping dog, there was then no two-year-old in the room.

The sound of the portal closing finally roused North, who remained utterly disoriented as he sat up still half-asleep. He then noticed the sleeping Pooka and Tooth Fairies, and the absense of the other Guardians he decided in his near drunken state that the best way to catch up was to load all three immortals with him into his sleigh.

Outside, soaring over the rooftops of Burgess, things were moving at a decidedly faster pace. Jack and Nightlight flew either side of Sandy, chasing the pair of Nightmares down. One cut through a building with Sandy in close pursuit, while Jack and Nightlight darted around and rebounded off of walls and chimneys going after the other.

All three were laughing, each in his own way, as Sandy burst out of the building while riding on the back of the Nightmare he'd been after. One touch of his hand and his will changed it back into dreamsand, while up ahead of him his peers cornered the second one and Jack frost it solid.

Jack tapped the frozen smear on the rooftop using his staff, pointing out how the wispy tendrils from it were the only things still moving.

"Check it out, Nightlight. Think we can turn it back into dreamsand, or should we wait for Sandy?"

Nightlight shrugged.

'He's the only one who can question his dreams, so we might as well wait. It's not going to tell us where Pitch is hiding, without Sandy here.'

A shadow slinked up behind them, and a voice made both of them turn in surprise.

"Frost?" When Jack blasted ice at him, and Nightlight lashed out with his diamond spear, Pitch slipped through the shadows and reappeared on an adjacent roof. "For a Spirit of the Seasons, you spend an awful lot of time with those wierdos... This isn't your fight, Jack."

Jack glared at him, advancing a step with his staff at the ready.

"And I told you that I'm one of them... I'm a Guardian, whether you believe it or not, and this is my fight."

Pitch regarded the two of them, clearly trying to decide if or not to strike at Nightlight and risk hitting Jack in the process. If the Spirit of Winter was telling the truth, then this was a problem... And more than likely that was exactly what the Man in the Moon had intended.

He gritted his teeth in a snarl, tense and ready to attack, when movement at the corner of his eye made him turn and leap back. Because Sandy had crept up on him, and was now glaring at him in disapproval with arms crossed.

Pitch straightened up, relaxing a little, and laughed almost casually.

"Ah, now this is who I'm looking for- Whoa!"

He didn't get to finish, due to Sandy lashing out with a pair of dreamsand whips. Jack and Nightlight forced to duck under the slash of a massive scythe of corrupted sand, when the Nightmare King retaliated. Several strikes were exchanged, Pitch and Sandy each blocking everything the other used, until the greater flexibility of Sandy's weapon slipped around his opponent's guard.

One of the whips wrapped around Pitch's wrist, and Sandy responded by flinging him up into the air. He then adjusted the position of the hold to Pitch's waist, slammed him down onto the rooftop, off the nearby wall, and then flung him down into the street below.

Jack and Nightlight joined the Guardian of Dreams at the edge of the roof, looking past the dented car which Pitch had hit and trigged the alarm of. Jack then smirked, when he spotted the groaning figure of the Nightmare King, sprawled in the road fumbling to get up.

"Remind me not to get on your bad side."

Sandy grinned and dusted off his hands, before all three of them dropped down to the street.

Pitch scrambled backwards from them, crawling along the ground, his tone pleading.

"Okay, easy! You can't blame me for trying, Sandy. You don't know what it's like to be weak and hated. It

was stupid of me to mess with your dreams." All three Guardians regarded him, unimpressed, and as expected, Pitch's expression became taunting. "So I'll tell you what... You can have 'em back!"

Black sand shot up in clouds out of all of the nearby drains, transforming into Nightmares even as more of the creatures marched out of alleyways and yet more took up positions on the surrounding roofs. There were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand, and Jack grimaced a little as he tried to keep his tone lighthearted.

"You two take the ones on the left, I'll take the ones on the right?"

Pitch was up off the ground now and astride one of the Nightmares. He coldly regarded the trio in front of him, then smirked.

"Boo." His mocking word signalled the attack, and his Nightmares began to charge as he shouted. "Keep the Spirit of Winter busy, but don't harm him! Destroy the others!"

Jack immediately took that as licence to throw himself between the greatest number of Nightmares and his two fellow Guardians. Grinning to himself in grim humour as he changed positions every time the creatures tried to get around him. Sandy was shattering the creatures one-by-one, as was Nightlight shredding them with his spear. The moonbeam within its diamond tip, blazing with light that Fearlings had once shied away from, but which unfortunately the Nightmares were immune.

But it didn't stop the spear's razor sharp edge from doing its job, even as it was also the case that Jack's attempts to be a living shield were only having a moderate effect.

They were going to be overwhelmed if this kept up.

Pitch smiled darkly as he watched, anticipating victory to be near, when the sudden sound of sleighbells heralded the arrival of North and the others.

The sleigh swooped down out of the clouds, the distraction providing Sandy with the chance to catapult himself, Nightlight, and Jack up into the sky. And while it seemed that the dive at close range right over Pitch's head was deliberate... The fact that one of the sleigh's runners clipped a building as the reindeer charged upwards again, revealed that North had fallen asleep at the reins.

The impact jolted him, Tooth, and Bunny awake, this time to the point where they shook off the effects of the dreamsand. It was startling to wake up in the middle of a Nightmare battle, but to give credit they responded quickly. Tooth took flight, using the sharp edges of her wings to cut her targets to pieces, while North and Bunny used their weapons from the platform that the sleigh provided.

Higher up in the sky above the town, the other three Guardians were in the thick of it. Nightlight took advantage of the maneoverability he had up there, proving faster than the Nightmares which he circled and brought down one-by-one. But while he was managing to continue mostly unmolested, Sandy and Jack were being driven further and further apart from each other. Both locked within a circling cloud of Nightmares, and yet there was also a stark difference.

The Nightmares around Sandy were going all-out, while the ones around Jack were simply sacrificing themselves to stop him from going anywhere. Nightlight was left with a choice; Help Sandy, who was being attacked with the intent to kill. Or help Jack, who Pitch had no intention of harming.

The spectral boy hesitated, torn between the two choices, until he reasoned that Sandy would have a better chance with two coming to his aid and not just one.

Nightlight shot upwards to get above Jack, before plummeting downwards like a shooting star. He slammed right through the mass of Nightmares around him, breaking them apart, but in the same act also slammed straight into Jack.

Both of them burst out of the bottom of the mass, tumbling head over heels through the air. Nightlight was all set to silently cheer that it had worked, when he realised Jack was still falling... and that the Spirit of Winter's staff, lighter and slower to accellerate in its fall, was out of reach tumbling above him.

Lower down, North and Bunny saw Jack's descent, turning the sleigh with the intent to catch him. Yet above him Nightlight dove like a star once again, grabbed the stray staff, and flung it to his fellow Guardian.

Jack grabbed it in relief, slowing himself with wind as he then landed on the sleigh when it passed under him. Taking that moment to catch his breath, he then looked skywards only to gasp in horror.

"Sandy! We have to help him!"

The Sandman, now so very high up above them, was utterly surrounded by a swirling ring of corrupted sand. The strikes of his whips, relentless and rapid, barely purified any of it with each blow. In fact he barely seemed to be having much of an effect on the cloud at all.

His face a mask of fierce concentration, his attention on this foe that sought to overwhelm him, he failed to pay any attention to Pitch. For the Nightmare King stood upon a smaller cloud of sand just beyond the edge of the other, wearing a smile of wicked triumph.

He raised his hands as if drawing a bow, a jagged arrow of black sand forming in his grasp... and then he released it.

"NO!"

Jack's screamed word barely reached Sandy, such was the distance between them, but he heard it all the same. In that horrifying moment as he turned to face Pitch, with blackness spreading out across him from where the arrow had struck him in the back.

Dreamsand was a part of the Sandman, even as he wore it as a part of himself. He should have realised he would be vulnerable to the same 'trick' as his dreams.

Pitch laughed.

"Don't fight the fear, little man!" He sneered. "I'd say sweet dreams... But there aren't any left."

Sandy collapsed to his knees, feeling that fear crawling through him against his will as it turned his sand dull and dark. But a last glimmer of defiance remained as he reached inside his blackening clothing for something hidden within. His fingers clasping a handful of 'hope' before he stood straight in pride and felt the last of his strength crumble.

The golden glow at the heart of the darkened cloud, went out. The Guardians who had been frantically racing to his rescue, now yelling in denial. That he couldn't be gone.

"No! NO!"

Jack, who had leapt clear of the slower sleigh, was streaking upwards filled with rage and grief. Pitch glanced down at him, and the Guardians beyond, and smiled. Raising his arms, the Nightmare King then sent a cloud of black sand and Nightmares up and over in an arc straight at them. Might as well deal with them all, here and now.

The front of that cloud spread out as it neared Jack, and he knew the Nightmares intended to go around him and after the others. But if Pitch thought that... if he really thought he was going to just let that happen... He was secriously underestimating the fury that Jack felt right now.

The Rage of Winter, that came whenever someone hurt one of his Lieutentants, was nothing compared to this...

The whole sky seemed to shudder with the shockwave that radiated from Jack. The Spirit of Winter's staff crackling white with pent-up power that he then released at the black sand with a scream.

Pitch's eyes actually widened a little in fear, when the blast of ice and painfully bright powder hit, froze, and began to devour the entire arc of sand between him and Jack. Such was the force that the entire structure began to explode with the ice's expansion, obliterating everything to tiny shards that rained harmlessly down onto the town below.

The explosion flung Pitch backwards with a yelp, leaving him tumbling towards Jackswood Park, while on the opposite side Jack was flung backwards towards the sleigh.

Jack tumbled limp through the air, staff still clenched in his grasp, and yet too dazed to fly. Tooth and Nightlight caught him, returning him unconcious to the sleigh. And with nothing more they could do right now, North made the call.

Down below, in the park, Pitch clambered to his feet and watched as the Guardians fled through one of North's portals. The after-effects of Jack's power, of which a fragment had reached past the darkness surrounding Pitch, making the Nightmare King smile with a kind of childish glee that had for a long time been beyond him.

He laughed, victorious in this battle, and gloated as the moon looked on.

"Finally! Someone who knows how to have a little fun!"

~(-)~

Alaia Skyhawk: Poor Sandy, and poor Jack :(

Next chapter will see some more of 'Uncle Jack', and part 7 will be the "Missing Saturday" meaning everything in that chapter will basically be original content.

And, on a side note, I'll point out now that yes, this arc IS a novelisation of the film with things added/changed/fixed, but I happen to enjoy taking the original of something and changing it in subtle ways based on "what ifs" (Like I've done for all 5 Seasons of Merlin, resulting in my most popular series of fics). The whole story is a "what if Jack remembered right away?" premise, and how it could change things afterwards as a result. There's no way I was going to put so much effort in on all the earlier arcs, and then skip over the film arc without doing its potential the proper justice.

So basically, to the individual who complained about me novelising the film for this arc. If you choose to stop reading this fic because I'm doing that, then that's your choice and I bid you well... But you're going to miss a LOT of stuff that's coming after the film arc ends should you do that (evil grins)

If you'd actually left a signed review instead of an anonymous one, you'd have gotten this reply as a nice PM with a teaser of what's to come. I guess you'll now just have to wait and see along with everyone else :P