"I'm waking up! I feel it in my bones, enough to make my systems blow. Welcome to the new age."

The moment his touch left her arms, Tooth backed into the door with a shaky breath through her nose.

From the vent in the door above her, she watched how the blue light from outside shined through onto one of his brown eyes. Jack's iris lit to a bright brown and his pupil dilated from the shadows around them. But he didn't do anything for a long while as he stared at her. His body was eerily calm and steady until he clenched a fist.

"You're the tooth."

"Stop calling me the tooth! My name's Tooth!"

Jack took a step beside her and towered over her again. When she froze and stared at him wide-eyed, he turned his head down slightly to look at her.

He narrowed his eyes.

"Prove to me you're a princess."

Her mouth made an 'O' shape.

"Wh...H-How!?"

Jack put his ungloved hand on the door and listened with his acute hearing for any sounds from outside, but his glare was still on her.

"Unless you can, I can't trust you, now can I?"

She might be a lure Pitch left to distract any person who broke in for the same reasons he did. She also might say anything Pitch wanted her to just to stay alive.

He couldn't risk it.

"Well?"

Tooth licked her cracked lips. Her heart beat loudly through her ears as she looked at the shapes in the closet.

"I'll just leave you," he threatened.

"No!" she whispered and spun to face him fully but her back hit a metal shelf behind her and it rattled. Jack's gloved hand shot out to hold it steady so no sound was made.

He trapped her between him and the wall and clenched his jaw sternly, but Tooth couldn't see it.

"Wait! I can I...just let me..." she stuttered shakily. This was the only chance for her to get out!

She feared him almost as much as Pitch Black or any of his hired assassins, but she'd seen what Jack was capable of. He'd killed several of them, for her, and he knew how to get into the warehouse.

Which meant he also knew how to get out.

Jack spoke again.

"I know Punjam Hy Loo," he recited under his breath. "It's a tiny island nation floating in the Bay of Bengal, and has a population of under 110, 000 people. It's official language is Thai, the locals call themselves 'lulus', and it's main export is peppermint."

Tooth's mouth fell open.

"I also know they have a royal family but that's where my knowledge stops," and Jack leaned in dangerously close. "So unless you can prove to me right now that you're at least from there, then your story won't have an happy ending."

Tooth's lips quivered, terrified that he knew so much about her virutally, invisible country but more so that he was seriously considering just leaving her.

Her hands shot up around her dress, patting it absentmindedly as her thoughts raced.

What did she have? What could she do? Did she even want to trust someone as deadly as–

Her palm froze against her chest, she felt her necklace.

Tooth scrambled desperately for the chain and pulled it out. She lifted it to the light through the door vent and let the blue light shine on the rainbow feathers.

Tooth gulped bravely.

"T-These are the feathers of Punjam's official bird, the fiery-throated hummingbird," she whispered anxiously. "This necklace was given to me by the king before he died...he was my father."

Jack stared at the feathers heavily. After a moment, he switched his cold gaze back to hers and sighed angrily. But he didn't reject her.

Instead, he dropped his hands from the metal shelf and the door and moved around her. They were running out of time and he needed to think fast.

Tooth impulsively shifted around him, afraid he'd touch her again, but she lifted her eyebrows as he moved against the door.

"So you believe me?" she whispered with a scared and hopeful tone.

Jack glared back at her silhouette in the dark. "What?"

"It's just...no one ever takes me seriously when I say Toothiana."

"Fine, I'll believe you," Jack said as he turned his head back around. "But only because I knew Punjam's official bird too, and I don't think anyone can come up with a more ridiculous name at a time like this."

"Hey!" she cried and Jack went to cover her mouth again but Tooth slapped his hand away.

"Try that again and I swear to god, I'll bite next time."

Despite his usual, unfazed exterior, Jack was inwardly surprised at her attitude.

Maybe she wasn't from around here, but he shushed her anyway and moved back to the door.

When a long shadow cast itself under the door and abruptly vanished, he sprung back up and gestured her toward the back wall. Tooth shuffled awkwardly as she felt him try to block her body like a shield. An air vent blew cold air down onto both of them and when the back of her arms touched the cold concrete, she heard him mutter.

"I don't know if they have heat sensors," he mumbled and she felt what was probably his hand brush her arm, his cold fingers twitching in the breeze. He then went back to the door. The stark seriousness of his actions suddenly made all the fire in Tooth's core evaporate.

Here in the dark, alone with a stranger, the wind made her take hold of reality.

"...Jack?" she whispered suddenly. Her voice became tiny.

He turned his head slightly but she didn't see it.

She was thinking about her loved ones. Tatiana, Minister Ty, and the warmth and light in her bedroom back at the palace where she and her handmaidens were all supposed to be having their slumber party right now. She wanted them.

She wanted out.

She wanted home.

"What...what do they want with me?"

Her question made Jack scrunch his eyebrows together. He frowned slightly as he glared into the darkness before he walked back over to her.

"I don't know," he answered honestly and then looked down at her silhouette sternly. "But I'll get you out."

Tooth's blood rushed through her ears.

"You will?"

And she saw his silhouette nod.

"I was going to regardless. So don't worry, your highness."

Tooth felt herself pause.

His voice suddenly became so...formal.

What happened to all that bite and all the insults he was making at her just a minute ago? Jack waited for a response before she made a weak sound of agreement, then he started to pace around the closet. It made her face grow crestfallen and more numb on the inside than the AC made her on the outside.

As usual, her title mattered more.

But at least she could calm down a bit...He hadn't known about her.

That meant he hadn't been hired or came to kidnap her after all.

All the same, loyalties were fickle. They could switch sides just like that.

As Tooth was having her internal battle, Jack was having his own. He gritted his teeth and clenched a fist as he made a mental risk assessment.

He listed the negatives against him.

There were probably more hitmen patrolling the halls by now and with the princess' lack of fighting skills it was going to be hard to defend and protect her the entire time.

As for his positives, he took into account her quick reaction time and the weapon-gun ratio of the guards – many didn't carry anything other than a rifle (minus the two pistols he took) so their precision would be less than accurate.

He snapped his fingers. For now, Jack knew that he had to abandon his original plan of finding Pitch.

As he thought about it, a brief flash of the dead ELF agent in the red uniform passed through his mind.

There was something much bigger going on than he'd originally known all those weeks ago.

But as much as he'd rather face a legion of highly trained assassins in one setting or the regular police who had him on their wanted lists, this girl...this princess, she needed to get out secretly.

He'd had his share of nights in cop heists and terrorist holding cells...only to break out just as easy. But this was not her war, and god knows Pitch loved warfare. Especially his own.

That's when Jack's boot hit the bottom of a shelf. He frowned and quickly dropped to it, feeling around it in the dark.

When he touched the two things that would work to his advantage, he narrowed his eyes.

They would have to do.

...

"Hey, what's that?"

When they zoomed in with their yellow goggles, they spotted the princess walking down the hall, looking alone and afraid. She was wearing a janitor's uniform, rubbing her sleeves and shuffling in its long pant legs.

"Grab her," a hitman barked and one of them stalked toward her quietly when her back was turned.

As the man walked ahead, a loud grunt was heard behind him and he spun.

His partner was gone.

With an angry snarl, he turned back to the scared and tiny princess but she was also gone. He advanced more quickly, pulling out a long whip to catch her since Pitch didn't want them to shoot at her. But when he reached the end of the hall and was about to turn his head, a pair of long legs swooped down from above and went around his neck.

Jack instantly tightened the grip of his thighs and twisted his torso. A loud crick was heard and they dropped to the ground.

As they were falling, Jack ripped the cover off the air vent with him and when he fell, the cold air from the hole blew loudly. He went into a tumble roll and uncoiled smoothly into a quick run, grabbing the whip as he did.

Tooth reappeared from the hall following after him.

She made sure to keep a safe distance from Jack as he rushed ahead. His adrenaline rose, pumping through his ears. He tightened his fists.

From the right, a new pair of yellow goggles was ready to pounce him but Jack snapped the whip forward and caught him round the neck.

When the hitman was yanked forward, Jack threw an upward punch into his back then spun and rammed his elbow into the guy's exposed chest cavity. The man dropped unconscious with the whip still wrapped around him, but as Jack took a breath, six more yellow orbs were pushing through the darkness toward him.

He glared darky.

Jack pivoted his left foot and snapped his other leg out in a powerful front kick, getting one goon perfectly in the gut. He then tripped the guy and pushed him aside before he quickly followed with a round knee strike to the next guard.

Tooth by then had slowed behind him to watch the scene unfold.

The first was stumbling forward in pain while Jack was busy delivering some punches to the second. Then the third finally appeared behind all of them with his gun poised and ready, Jack bent his knees and pushed the second guard's hunched form down slightly as a shield. When the gun appeared just over his partner's shoulder, he gave Jack the chance he wanted and the brunette reached up with his gloved hand and twisted the guy's wrist.

Then, in a blur too fast for Tooth's eyes to catch, Jack spun his body and pushed the second guy to the floor and snapped his arm back to grab the third by the throat, bringing him down too. When both were on the ground, Jack pulled out his silencer and shot their goggled masks between the eyes.

"HELP!"

He then fired into the head of the first who had already managed to go around Tooth and grab hold of her hair. Tooth cried out as her hands instinctively flew up to her eyes. When she dropped them and stumbled around the body, she stared terrifyingly at Jack. Her frown deepened as she saw his shadowy silhouette click the rifle and growl angrily.

He must have run out of bullets.

Jack lifted his head. He shot a glare in her direction then chucked the gun to the floor. He still had the second one hooked behind him but he was relieved that his right hand didn't have to grip the first anymore. His fingers flexed in the cold air.

Then he ran further and she gulped loudly but boldly pushed on after him. As they ran, Tooth's skin prickled with heightened fear and alertness.

Her mouth was dry and there was a pain in her chest from all the palpitations she kept fighting. Shadows kept appearing on every wall and she wasn't sure if they were actually there or if her mind was imagining it like when she was in the bathroom at the hotel.

It also didn't help that the wind from the vents seemed to keep growing stronger and louder with every step they took. It was unnerving and she tossed her dark hair out of her face in frustration.

Suddenly they entered a larger hallway with dark windows.

With a grateful gasp for air, Tooth felt her speed increasing. And now that she could see more clearly, she watched as Jack moved way ahead of her head now, going after a guard directly in front of him. When he made a jumping high kick to the guy's head, she was impressed.

"He is really good with those legs of his," Tooth said in her head, eyes wistful. But she didn't have any more time to gawk as a long shadow suddenly spread beneath her feet.

Turning, Tooth found three more men appear.

She gasped and Jack turned slightly at her voice. He gritted his teeth.

"Princess, you know how to dance?!" he barked as he rushed at her with the guard he kicked out quickly recovering and chasing after him. It looked like the two would both get trapped.

Tooth blinked repeatedly not understanding the severity of the question but she nodded anyway.

"U-Uh sure?!" she sputtered, bridging on both anger and confusion. "But just like the shuffling and spinning you do at a dance part–AH!"

Jack grabbed her hand and spun her so tight, her planted feet gave him the leverage he needed to lift up and perform a crescent kick to all three men behind her. Tooth was so tense, she didn't even feel him do it as she squeezed his fingers in a tight knuckle.

Then almost immediately, she felt his arms around her waist.

With red cheeks and blood rushing in her ears, she felt his cold fingers send that familiar icy and electric energy shoot through the janitor's suit and into her skin.

Jack lifted her up and using its momentum, he twisted her sideways and spun her around him like a log before he thrust her forward.

He used her own legs and feet to knock the guy who'd been following him in the gut!

When the guy stumbled, Jack quickly dropped her on her feet and pushed her forward.

"Now, go under him!" he ordered and she didn't miss a beat.

Tooth made into a sprint and as Pitch's goon was scrambling to recover, she bravely dropped into a dive between his legs and slid under him on the cold tiles. She was so amazed she'd even had the balls to just do that, that she missed the guard's shocked expression through his goggles too.

But when he finally remembered to look back up to Jack, the brunette had already moved in close enough to perform a butterfly kick to his jaw. The impact broke his skull and as he fell, Jack turned back to the face the three goons.

"Go for the door!" he urged her while staring them staring down. "Open it!"

As he heard her feet stamping away, the three guards surrounded him. They looked at him predatorily but Jack wasn't scared. He raised a tense eyebrow.

He grounded his feet and a second later, he took something out of his pocket, flexed it out, and snapped the long weapon expertly across two of the men's necks.

They tried to recover but Jack pulled the long weapon back and twisted it in his grip before swooping low toward one and hitting another unexpectedly. The pain of the steel caused the goon to cry out.

This skinny jerk was fast!

Jack twirled the baton into the third guy's head and the goon dropped down unconscious. When the other two tried to advance, he hit one in the shin and threw a roundhouse kick to his leg, shattering the femur.

Finally seeing the opportunity, Jack reeled back and ran after the princess, firing a shot at the second hitman while he collapsed his baton back into its short piece and re-pocketed it.

He loved the little gadget. He'd stolen it from a police officer many months ago and although it wasn't as long as a staff, it always came in handy when he needed to take on a group of guys at once.

When Tooth reached the door, she grabbed the handle with shaky fingers and yanked it with all her might. But it didn't budge.

"Sh-Shit!" she screamed angrily.

"What is it?"

"I-It's locked!"

She felt like her arms were going to rip off from the force as she kept pulling desperately. When a dark shadow past the window of the door on the other side, she jumped away. She kicked the door angrily as Jack appeared beside her.

His forehead was creased as he looked down at her. She then moved aside and he gave the door a forceful tug. When it didn't move, he glared but didn't have the same look of distress on his face as the princess did.

He was more controlled than that.

After he fired one, more shot at the last hitman still alive behind them, Jack gritted his teeth. Then clenching his leather glove into a tight fist, he reeled back his arm and punched it through the glass window in the door.

When the glass shattered, he reached an arm through the broken window and used his hand quickly to unlock it from the other side.

When it clicked, Jack yanked it open and bolted through.

"Stay on me!" Jack ordered steadily as he holstered his gun and sprinted with Tooth on his heels.

Weird shadows flitted everywhere down the hall, messing with both their minds. Several times Jack impulsively jumped away from one wall and told Tooth to go another way, but he somehow knew they weren't really there. His instincts on alert, but his intuition was more finely tuned than the average man.

Suddenly another hitman appeared from a side hall with a gun aimed at Jack's face. His subconscious kicked in.

He knocked the gun away with cobra speed and the bullet zinged as it exploded in the wall to their left. Tooth screamed and ducked her head.

"Your highness, keep going!" Jack barked and he watched as her janitor-clad body flew past him and the gunman.

Before Jack could blink, Pitch's man had wrapped his hand behind Jack's neck and was pulling him forward. As Jack's spine bent forward, the hitman reached down and pulled Jack's silencer rifle from his belt.

This hitmen was little more experienced than the others, but Jack knew that still wouldn't be enough.

By the time the hitman had taken hold of the weapon, Jack had already used the momentum of the push to spin back around. When the guard was ready to take a shot, Jack was already standing up facing him. His hands snapped up to twist the weapon expertly out of the guard's hands into his own and in an unblinking stare, Jack fired. He then spun back to the princess.

He shot his last three bullets ahead of her into the full-scale glass window at the end of the hall. When the spidery cracks appeared, he trailed after.

"Run straight through the glass window!" Jack yelled.

"WHAT?" Tooth screamed, her heart pounding with adrenaline.

She couldn't see past the darkness out of it. What if they were floors above the ground? What if was just concrete and they made ended up making a horrible, big spl–

"Do you trust me?!" he demanded. She was almost within two meters of the window.

"NO!" she wailed but didn't show signs of slowing down.

Jack's view of Tooth's body was suddenly blocked by another guard.

In a frustrated snarl, Jack made a quick high jump with the wall and hooked his legs around the guard's head. Then wrapping his legs around the guy's neck, he twisted them both sideways onto the floor and into a tight sleeper hold before he rolled back up.

Tooth was at the end of the hall. Jack threw his empty gun down.

"JUST DO IT!"

And with a loud whimper, she bit her lip and shut her eyes.

Tooth jumped sideways at the last second and felt her entire body shatter the glass of the window.

...

One second, it felt like she was flying in midair with all the shards floating around her. Then in the next...

Gravity lurched in her chest and she began to surge toward the ground below with the glass like sharp rain as it raced her down. As Tooth's body began to turn facing upward, she felt her stomach rise up her throat. She saw the gaping hole in the dark window and stars overhead. Then she saw Jack, whose body was diving out after hers.

In the rush of the quickening wind, Jack pushed his speed faster to reach her. As her face drew nearer, Tooth raised her hands out for him to catch her. He narrowed his brown eyes in an unnatural calm.

Jack caught hold of her janitor's sleeve and in the next split second, he pushed forward to wrap his arms around her. And a moment later, he twisted them around so he was on the bottom...just as they crashed through a glass ceiling below.

When they landed, Jack took the brunt of the fall and coughed out painfully when they landed on the piles of tarp that Pitch used to cover sections of the warehouse with.

Jack grit his teeth painfully as several shards of glass caught in his back and in his hair but he blinked out the white stars in his eyes and tried to lift his head. It wasn't that bad of a fall but unlike Tooth, he'd done a lot worse.

For a moment they both lay there, their hearts threatening to burst out of their chests until Jack recovered quickly.

He heard the princess gasping in what sounded like a panic attack and he quickly lifted his gloved hand to cover her mouth, ignoring the pain and cuts in his bare arms as he did. She took deep breaths through her nose, grateful just this once that he put his hand over her mouth to silence her. They couldn't let anyone know where they were and thankfully the dark sky had no moon to shine down on them through the ceiling they'd just destroyed.

"Go!" he grunted softly. "Move to the left."

He'd worry about her well-being after they finished getting away, and they were almost out!

Tooth nodded through wet eyes and rolled over, less painfully than Jack did. She stumbled on her shaky legs and tried to hobble down the tarp mountain as quietly as she could. When she reached the bottom, she saw why Jack had wanted her to pull such a risky move.

He was brilliant.

A mystery. A nut.

A killer maybe.

But he was...brilliant.

...

Pitch's men had no time to react on the ground level as one of their own cars suddenly appeared, driving hellishly through the warehouse lot and across the concrete.

When they saw who was driving, they immediately let loose a barrage of flying bullets and weapons at their disposal.

At the same time, Pitch was watching through several security cams. His yellow eyes glared wildly at the speeding getaway car.

"Shut down the gate," he ordered and his hired hitman pressed his complink to send the order to the gate guards. Meanwhile, Jack was hearing the exact same report through his own stolen Bluetooth.

"Pitch wants that main gate shut NOW. Repeat: Seal the main gate. Do not let the target get away with the tooth."

Jack shifted the gear and hit the gas as Tooth wiped her cheeks and rubbed it on the janitor outfit. A loud alarm started going off around the lot and she watched as red lights began to flash far ahead. It reminded her terribly of the alarms that went off in the hotel when she was kidnapped.

But when she saw where Jack drive towards, she snapped her head at him wildly.

"No, NO!" she cried shaking her head. She pointed through the dashboard. "You can't make that!"

Jack's jaw was set tightly as he narrowed his brown eyes, dead focused on the closing steel gate as it loomed far ahead.

"Not if I don't hit 105 km/h in 3.2 seconds, I won't," he bit out then downshifted quickly and hit the brake to spin the silver car around a tight corner before hitting the accelerator. They hit several of Pitch's men standing idle in the center of the path to shoot him but only because the hitmen didn't anticipate Jack's control of the car's speed to come so fast.

Tooth cried out in distress.

"We won't make it. We won't! There's no way you can hit that in a ca–"

"Do I tell you how to do your job?" he barked and her mouth snapped shut. "Don't tell me how to do mine."

And with a tight fist, he pushed the gear shift into one final notch and floored the accelerator. The car made a screeching sound as its back tires burned rubber then it shot forward like a bullet.

Tooth refused to squeeze her eyes shut but she couldn't see through the glass properly anyway since the car was moving so fast. She held onto her passenger seat as Jack concentrated on nothing but his natural fire to drive. His senses were hypersensitive as his gloved hand gripped the steering wheel.

The gate was now closer than before as Jack crossed fifty meters in 4 seconds. And when the gate came down as they finally got to it, Tooth shrunk in her seat and couldn't do it.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

She missed how they made a perfect cut between the gate and its tiny opening. And before any of Pitch's men could stop them, the car was already gunning down the beaten dirt path and away from the warehouse.

...

The guard dropped his hand away from his complink, he stared at Pitch's back through the yellow goggles of his black gas mask.

"Shall we go in pursuit of them?" the hitman asked Pitch. "I can have several units to depart in minutes."

But the taller man just continued to glare out onto the now dark and silent warehouse lot. He watched the shadows flicker and dance in each cam.

He'd almost started to miss the bleak and quiet since the uninvited guest ruined it by killing off 32% of his men. But what a wonderful ruining the princess' dark-clad daredevil had made. He'd have to recruit a man like that one day soon.

"No matter," finally was Pitch's blunt reply. "She will come back, so there is no use in prolonging the inevitable. But perhaps later, if the men get antsy."

The hitman nodded as he let Pitch walk around him.

"And besides," Pitch added. "She was only the extra prize remember? We can still do more than enough with what we have for the time being. Now tell the boys downstairs that they can begin to start their tests if they so wish."

And he gave the guards a twisted smile.

"We still have other work to do, gentleman."

Chapter's soundtrack: "Radioactive" – Imagine Dragons