Alaia Skyhawk: Here's the next bit. It's rather wordy, but that can't be helped. Chapters with loads of dialogue tend to crop up at times like this 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 75: The First Step

Fingers tapped on the keyboard frantically, the woman they belonged to staring intently and in great concern at the computer screen. Every time a sequence of clicks came to an end, and she pressed enter, a desperate curse came after the following pause at the message on the screen each time.

'GPS Signal not detected.'

The woman, Marcia, tried again, and again, and again. The satellite images and weather radar had, this morning, revealed a massive wind-storm whipping up clouds of snow across the entire area where the anomaly was. Estimated wind-speed was well over a hundred miles per hour, and the area where the team had been was so flat as to be totally exposed. That combined with the lack of a tracking signal from their GPS, left only the gut-wrenching conclusion that they'd been swept away from the winds, perhaps into some glacial crevasse, and buried... That is, they were almost certainly dead.

"Dammit!"

At the sound of her fist slammed down onto the edge of her desk, a figure peered into the tiny office. It was Patrick, the research station's mechanical engineer, who looked after and maintained the generators and the snow-mobiles used to keep the small airstrip clear.

He entered the room, stopping behind her to place a hand on her shoulder.

"Still nothing?"

She bowed her head, before glancing at the nearby clock which read almost midday.

"It's been more than twelve hours since the GPS signal was last detected, and that storm... There's no thick cloud cover, just wind and the snow it's carrying, nothing dense enough to block the signal. But even without that, their satellite phone should be working; it's an entirely separate piece of equipment. If they'd managed to hunker down somewhere, they'd have at least attempted to leave a message by now using it."

Patrick sighed, giving her shoulder a small squeeze.

"Don't give up yet. Teams have lost contact for longer than twelve hours before, in storms. There was that team four years ago, that was incommunicado for almost a week. I'm sure Marcus and the others are fine."

She shook him off, turning her head to regard him hopelessly.

"Patrick, their tents are only rated for a wind-speed of eighty knots! Ninety-two miles per hour! The estimates from satellite and radar telemetry, are showing a minimum wind-speed of almost a hundred and thirty miles per hour in that area! Their shelters will have been shredded!"

Her voice was rising in hysteria. "We don't even have the equipment to send a rescue! Not at a tiny sub-station like this! It will be hours before one of the planes at Rothera could get here, and it wouldn't have enough fuel left to risk flying out to where the team were even if the storm had stopped by then."

Marcia slumped, head in hands, and started to sob. The risk of being killed in a storm was a real threat out here, everyone knew that. But it didn't make accepting a loss at the weather's hands, any easier.

Patrick knelt down beside her, placing his arm around her shoulders so her head could rest on his shoulder. She continued to cry, the screen of the nearby computer still displaying the 'GPS Signal not detected' message... until a few minutes later the computer let out a bleep.

Marcia jolted, head snapping up so she could look at the screen and the new message 'GPS Signal detected' that it now showed. Her cry of joy and relief ringing out before she suddenly paused in surprise.

Patrick looked over her shoulder.

"What is it? It is them?"

She tapped away on the keyboard, telling the computer to plot the current location of the signal in relation to the previously plotted points. Her expression was now confused.

"This has to be an error. The beacon has been reset, to upload coordinates to the tracking map every thirty seconds instead of once an hour. That and... according to this, the beacon is here. Outside the station, right now."

A look passed between them, both getting up and heading to the small locker-room where all the outdoor gear was kept. They quickly wrapped up and headed out into the cold, eyes scanning the nearby area before Patrick suddenly pointed.

"Is that a sled?"

The two of them ran towards it as fast as the snow would allow. Yet they'd barely gotten within twenty metres of it, when out of nowhere a second sled was thrust into view to thud into the side of the first one. And then, as if this unexplainable event had been waiting for someone to be there to witness it, the missing team's third sled slid into view, followed by the ragged remains of three tents being tossed into the open from thin air, one-by-one.

Marcia and Patrick stared, at a loss as to what to make of it, and then something so miraculous as to seem crazy happened.

Marcus, Jake, and Henry walked into view as if though through a door, the foremost of them waving awkwardly at his startled peers.

"Hey there. We um... We found rather more than we were expecting. Which is to say we found something, or rather met someone, we would have thought impossible before now."

There was a rustle from the sled that had been pushed through first with the GPS handset on top of it. That particular piece of equipment now absent. The sound broke Marcia from her rigid state.

"W-what the heck is going on? How did you get back here? Who and what did you meet?"

After noting the handset being gone, Jake let out a resigned sigh.

"That would be best explained when he gets back here, because it looks like he's taken our GPS on a joyride. Probably to prove without doubt that something can and is taking it all over the world, with the ease of a single step for each new location. Now that I think of it, that'll be why he made us reset it to plot its coordinates every thirty seconds. Let's go inside, and check the screen."

As the trio started towards the cluster of cabins that made up the station, Marcia grabbed Jake by the arm.

"Answer me! What the heck is going on, and what the heck are you talking about?"

Henry took hold of her by the shoulders, and started to guide her and Patrick towards the station entrance.

"Let's get inside, out of the cold, and we'll explain."

She didn't look happy, not at all, but she couldn't argue that being inside wouldn't be better for this conversation. By the time they were inside the station, in her office, the GPS tracker screen already looked like a child had been scribbling on it. In the time since Jack had purloined the handset, he'd already taken it to China, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Siberia, Brazil, and even as they watched a new location pinged up... The North Pole. Two more locations popped up, with lines connecting them to the previous ones, during the following minute, and then the next one after that was the research station again.

A firm knock sounded on the main door, and Marcus went to let Jack in. Marcia and Patrick, of course, still couldn't see him. They did however see the GPS handset apparently floating through the air.

Marcia yelped as it was tossed lightly in her direction, almost dropping it when it reached her. Her eyes were wide, and she was clearly spooked, her voice emerging barely louder than a whisper.

"Is there a... ghost?"

The trio of researchers glanced at each other, Henry looking somewhat wry considering he was crammed almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack in the office's doorway.

"No, no ghost, just the Spirit of Winter; Jack Frost. He made the 'rainbow ice', as he calls the glacial anomaly, to lure researchers to the area. He wanted to make a 'scientifically recordable contact' at his home within that glacier. You have to believe he's here, that he's real, to see him. Or, as he put it, at least keep an open mind. To believe that anything is possible unless there's conclusive weighing evidence to prove that it isn't."

Marcia's mouth was working silently, but beside her Patrick seemed to be keeping a clearer head. The engineer was peering intently at the apparently empty air where the handset had been floating, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He then blinked, frowning a little.

"I see a blue, white, and brown blur. It's as tall as you, Henry, and shaped like-"

Jack made a dash forward, closing the metre and a half gap between him and Patrick.

"A person."

Patrick stumbled back a step, the fuzzy image before him coming more into focus now he'd actively reacted to its movement and even heard its voice. And then, almost as if a veil had been lifted, he saw the person in front of him with perfect clarity. A young-seeming man with white hair and blue eyes, his very presence radiating a sense of cold even though the room was warm.

Jack gave him a small smile, before letting out a sigh and looking at Marcia.

"And you need to relax."

A pale hand emerged from under the man's silver-edged cloak, a tiny cloud off blue-white dust coalescing in his grasp, and he flicked it in Marcia's direction.

It settled over the woman, the tension then visibly draining away from her, and she shook her head a bit as if dazed. She then blinked, as Patrick had done, and gasped.

"Who are you? Y-you were-"

"Invisible?" Jack grinned, leaping back lightly to land in the doorway again. "Shall we go sit in your dining room for this talk? This office is kinda small."

Henry moved into the hall.

"It's this way."

Jack followed, everyone else trailing behind. The station's dining room was a reasonable size, with a long table that could seat about ten people. But rather than take a place at it, Jack took a chair over to one of the tiny windows and sat there looking outside. It was clear by his manner, that at this point he wanted Marcus, Jake, and Henry to do the talking.

And talk, they did. Telling Marcia and Patrick everything that Jack had told them back at the Winter Sanctuary. And as the time passed, Marcia gradually went from shock and scepticism to wonder and curiosity. And then went even further, to excitement.

She clamped a hand on Patrick's arm in that eagerness, practically shaking him.

"Do you realise what this is? This is the discovery of a lifetime! We need to report this to Rothera, right now! And to the agency back in the US. Something like this demands a conference be held!"

It was now that Jack finally moved from his seat, striding over to brace his hands on the table.

"Whoa whoa, slow down! Slow down... This isn't the kind of thing that can be announced without the proper preparations and care. For a start, you'd be labelled downright crazy. We need to build up to it."

Marcus leaned on the table, frowning slightly.

"And how do you propose we go about doing that?"

Jack smiled.

"I take a couple of you back to that agency she mentioned, directly, and we go talk to the Director in person. The rest of you stay here and continue your work. I'll even make some more 'rainbow ice' for you to have fun studying."

Marcia blinked.

"You want to go see the Director now? But what about taking things slow?"

Jack glanced at her.

"I said to proceed with preparations and care, not slowly. You can't just call a massive conference, with any and every scientist and/or crackpot attending, and expect it to go well. The people who attend need to be picked for their relevance and specialities. This is something that's going to change the world in a big way, very quickly, once it gets out. Knowledge of the benefits it will bring, needs to be known among the people who already do research that advances technology and other things that cause that sort of change. One of the people I work for, the 'Man in the Moon', wants to rebuild the Golden Age that once existed. An era where differences meant nothing, and Belief and inspiration, creativity and acceptance, were everything."

Henry tilted his head in query.

"Golden Age?"

Jack regarded him for a long moment, obviously mulling over whether to answer or not, before he shrugged in a 'might as well' way.

"Long story short, the Golden Age refers to a period of about a thousand years, where about a hundred 'Constellation Families' presided over and looked after about a thousand planets and all the varied peoples that lived on them."

All five mortals present gasped, Patrick actually rising to his feet.

"Do you mean literally, other worlds? Life on other worlds, as in aliens?"

Jack rolled his eyes at that.

"If you're picturing little green or grey men, stop. As someone who has flown through the skies all over the world, for over three hundred years, I can tell you that UFO sightings are more likely to be sightings of immortals doing their work. Some of us can do things that are a bit flashy, and if an immortal is tired or bored they can get lazy about keeping things discrete. That, and I know a few who I can definitely imagine staging UFO sightings as jokes."

Jake chose that moment to get up, heading for the door.

"Do you mind if we film this conversation? It would save you repeating all this later, if we could just show the video to people once they've started believing enough to see and hear you."

The immortal sat down, eyebrows raised.

"That's actually a really good idea. Yeah, let's film it."

Jake left the room, everyone else waiting patiently until he returned a couple of minutes later with a camcorder and a tripod. He set it up at one end of the long table, so it would point along the length of it. He then gestured for Jack to swap places with Patrick, so that he was sat at the other end of the table opposite the camera.

Once that was done, and the camera set away, it was Marcus that got the conversation rolling again.

"So you say the Golden Age was an amalgamation of hundreds of worlds, led by the 'Constellation Families'. What did the people of those worlds look like? And what were those families?"

Jack rest his elbows on the table, his cheer now faded to a more serious manner.

"From what I know, for the most part the peoples of all those worlds didn't look all that different from Humans. There were a few that blatantly didn't, but as I said, differences meant nothing to the mentality and ways by which the people lived during the Golden Age. As for the Constellation Families, they were the greatest Wielders of Belief. Belief being the core power upon which the entire Golden Age was built. Because Belief can do great things, when it's used in a certain way. Belief was what gave magic to the people, but that power can be broken. That's what happened to the Golden Age, the reason it fell."

The researchers all glanced at each other, Marcia asking the question they were all thinking.

"What happened?"

Jack's expression was sombre.

"They made things just a bit too good, too idyllic, and that left them vulnerable to a very specific threat; Fear. Fear in its natural form, is very important, because it's the basis of survival instincts. The Constellation Families didn't realise that, and under their direction, fear became nothing but a word for a thing no one knew anymore. But people who don't know and value Natural Fear, are left panicking and terrorized when faced with Unnatural Fear; fear that serves no purpose for survival, any instead inhibits a person's ability to act. Another type of creature, that were formed of Unnatural Fear, had been driven away before the founding of the Golden Age. But those creatures came back, fear returned, and the people weren't equipped to handle it."

Henry nodded.

"So that's what ended the Golden Age."

Jack shook his head.

"No, that wasn't what did it. What caused it was the way in which the Constellation Families dealt with those creatures. Those things gained power from Unnatural Fear, and in the Constellations' naivety, they responded with the worst method possible. They captured and trapped all those shadowy creatures in a vast prison of lead, but that very act was an acknowledgement of how much they feared those creatures. It made them more powerful, and ended up only making the threat stronger, and so it backfired. The creatures got out, made more powerful by the Constellations' mistake. The Constellation Families, all but one of them, were crushed. The worlds they'd looked after, were wrecked and lost to shadows... Only a handful of survivors made it to this world, in an attempt to hide here, and they're still here now."

Marcia's voice was a whisper.

"Who? Who made it here?"

Jack sighed, starting to count a tally on his fingers.

"The 'Man in the Moon', Tsar Lunar, who is the sole survivor from the Constellation Families. The Lunar Lamas, a group of ten philosophical 'monks' that now live high up in the Himalayas at the Lunar Lamadary. After that there's Mother Nature, who is the other one I work for, and her father, Kosmotis. Then there's Nightlight, Sanderson Mansnoozie, and E. Aster Bunnymund, who is a Pooka. And that's it, that's all that made it here... Sixteen survivors, from almost a thousand worlds."

There were several seconds of almost horrified silence at that statement, Marcus muttering in shock under his breath before speaking.

"What happened to those 'creatures', then? They still out there?"

Jack shrugged.

"They're all here, on Earth, what's left of them anyway."

"What?!"

At that shocked exclamation, Jack snorted.

"Sheesh, relax. As I said, the Constellation Families chose the wrong method to deal with them, and that's what made them strong enough to do all that damage. Those creatures are only a threat if you treat them like one. Between me, Sandy, and Kosmotis, they've been reduced to pathetic little shadows that go bump in the night. Because between the three of us, we're keeping Unnatural Fear down to near zero, and Natural Fear up and in its proper place. The result? Only a sniff of power is available to those creatures, which now exist on subsistence level. They're now about as dangerous as a newborn kitten, except far less cute. A kid running around wearing a bed-sheet as a 'ghost', is scarier."

Under the table, Jack flicked frostdust along the length of it. His power pushing out the nervousness his audience were feeling. All five immediately relaxed, able now to take in his words and think clearly about them. His clear certainty on the matter of the unnamed 'creatures', reassuring them that he knew what he was talking about. If they were really still a threat, then wouldn't they have caused damage by now? Yet they clearly hadn't, because before now the five of them hadn't even known the things existed.

Jack sensed the general change in attitude among the five, and nodded to himself.

"I think we're ready for that visit to the US. Which two of you want to come?"

Marcia stood up, her expression stubborn.

"There's no way I'm sitting this out. Besides, you'll need me to reach the Director."

Jack glanced at the others.

"Who else?"

Marcus stood up now.

"I'm the most senior member of this research team, with the biggest reputation. We're going to need that, to help convince people to listen instead of outright labelling us as crazy."

Jack smiled, rising to his feet and conjuring up a new ice-mirror.

"Then pack up that camera, and let's get going. Where's the agency building located?"

Marcia smiled.

"Washington DC."

~(-)~

Alaia Skyhawk: Dundundun! Next chapter, Marcia, Marcus, and Jack get to shock the pants off the Director! But who else is Jack going to get in on the act? ...You'll just have to wait and see (Evil grin) :D