Here we go and Happy New Year! And, this is gonna sound really gross, but I achieved a side dream with this chapter: at a 473,000+ word count, Project Guardian has more words than J.R.R. Tolkien's Lords of the Rings trilogy! And it's only one story, not three. ;A; I'm not sure how I feel about that but I laughed so hard...then cried a little when I realized this was the product of lying about short chapters lol. So again, you guys don't know how humbled I am to have such amazing readers like you, knowing you've endured hours of scrolling and constant muscle tension! You guys are fantastic, so thank you so much for constantly motivating (and for always putting up with) me. :D
*Huge thanks to bluepianos who wanted to join in the hellfire and be my beta for this chapter! Thanks so much, K! Be sure to check out her amazingly written RS oneshots. Now then, from both of us, do your thing! (: Also, no Pitch doesn't have any attraction to Tooth. He is just really good at making it seem like she is a toy...and I kind of wanted Pitch to wear an awesome outfit for this final showdown thing, but I couldn't think of anything. So you just imagine his most badass (or stylish) outfit in your own head lol and I'll keep trying to convince myself that a trenchcoat isn't enough. :p
**As a project guardian reader, I think you know by now that NONE of us leave this fic without going to hell and back lol. But this is long, so please guys, take moderate breaks and don't over exert yourselves!
"Ours is no fictional love."
Holding Dome, Italy, 4:18 a.m.
Time slowed down.
His gloves gave no indication of heat.
How could she think when all that was on her mind were the ballrooms and cities glittering at night? And what happened to the diamond chandeliers and beautiful dresses? Or the fancy cars and the foreign accents laced with so many more emotions and reasons for getting up in the morning than you'd ever hope to experience in one lifetime?
She almost didn't believe anymore.
Tooth hyperventilated behind Pitch's glove over her eyes.
She almost didn't want to.
Click.
"Too...T–"
Click. Click.
Jack spun around.
"TOO–Bang!
He gasped under his breath and took a step back. A sudden pain struck him in the chest, and when he looked–
"J...Jack!" Baby Tooth screeched.
There was a tiny-sized syringe appeared on the front of Jack's uniform, lodged into his chest – smaller than he could dodge, and faster than he could catch.
"No!"
Aster panicked.
"JACK!"
But Jack yanked out the medical instrument out viciously. With silent fury, he quickly encased the glass in hard ice before crushing it in his hand, letting whatever dark orange liquid that had filled it drip to the floor. But when he turned left–
"Aster! Wait, no–Bang!
"NOOO!"
BT screamed. The girls followed.
"What's–" Tooth panicked. "What's g–Nmfhmm!"
Pitch covered her mouth with his other hand. The girls screamed louder. Jack observed the Nightmare legion around him in panic. Then to Aster for more syringes (even though they only needed one). Then back to at where Pitch held Tooth.
"Y..."
...When suddenly, Jack paused in motion, not by choice. His shoulders immediately felt heavy and his chest grew tight – his eyes flicked up to Pitch in a flash.
Pitch steadied his gaze on Jack but the ex-spy was murderous.
"You...You bast–"
"Hrevlova yoveen fet deuchnay...Jack."
His dead calm of a serial killer made the boys' eyes grow wide.
"луна...he knows," Aster hissed under his gruff voice and Jack started reaching for his gun.
"He knows the–Gah!"
The sisters gasped, stricken as the boy Tooth had hugged earlier, abruptly swayed, his mouth open, gasping for air – and when the other friend followed in suit, they started yelling. The two spies felt like an anchor had dropped onto their spines and plunged its way into their stomachs.
"No! Get up!"
"Please get up! Please!"
"What's ha..." Aster coughed. "What's happe–"
His vision shook, his fingers grew stiff...but no matter how hard they both tried to regulate their heartbeats–
"I can't...I ca–"
A cold feeling passed and something, thick and almost icy, swam through their bloodstreams.
"A seda..." Jack buckled his, adrenaline rapidly decreasing. "It's a s-se–"
The cold stopped, and the wind, and Jack felt as if his center wasn't responding to his urgency quick enough – his fight instinct fell into some kind of unnatural calm – and all his excessive strength evaporated like steam.
"...a sedative."
His knees hit the floor.
"Mmhm!" Tooth cried, but she had no sight. "Mhmmm!"
The legion swarmed him instantly as Toothiana's clones screamed; and while his fingers twitched and his face twisted horribly, the wind he summoned didn't obey and the vapour in the air wouldn't freeze.
Aster clawed at the earth to summon his own powers but only came up with fingernail scratches in the concrete.
"Get up!" BT shouted. "G-Get up!"
The legionnaires grabbed her. Tooth tried to rush forward–
"Ahh! Tooth, hel–"
"Bmmm!"
Pitch yanked her head back against the front of his dark coat and pinned her to his chest with strength. He watched as Jack and his partner struggle in their weakened states.
"Don't be nervous, it only riles them up more," he said. "They smell fear, you know, my Tenebris."
The dark silhouettes crawled near their shoulders, stretched at his command. Jack and Aster froze–
BOOOM...
Just like that, the ominous doors of the dome shut behind them, the sirens in the hall (and the ones in their heads) died away – as Jack's chest started to shake.
"I..." Jack heaved desperately, lungs quivering. "G...I-I–"
Aster exhaled resignedly and slumped to his knees.
Everything seemed to die, everything withered away, and the only thing that remained was a terrible realization.
Realization…
...and Pitch Black.
BANG!
...
With a burst of light, Pitch's men blew out two of Aster's ingenious and irreplaceable boomerang lights with quick, easy shots.
As gunfire cracked in the air, the other combatants apprehended the two GUARDIANs, forcing them into compromised positions before Pitch. They bound their steel cuffs so close to their wrists that Aster couldn't bend his fingers back enough to break them with his gene.
One by one, the lights kept going out.
Bang!
"I can't, I–" Tatiana freaked, and she tried to slide and run for her sisters. "Y-You guys!"
"Baby!" Tia screamed and Baby Tooth made a mad dash, her right hand clenched tight into a protective fist.
"Tulia!"
The little clone looked up in fright. But just before BT could lift her hand to throw–
"TATI, NO!"
A Tenebris quickly enveloped Tatiana's body with force, dragging her with him back to the centre of the dome.
Screaming and thrashing in abject terror, Tooth turned her head under Pitch's glove listening to BT's shouts, knowing that the rest of the Tenebris, in all their faceless subservience, could move around like silent demons.
And where was–
'WHERE'S–'
Bang!
Three of the legion kept their arms raised and fired at the orbs. Every time a violent spark appeared and decaying phosphors showered the floor, Tooth's sisters whined in fear.
They shrunk and hunched together. The dark entities crept closer to their tiny little circle–
Bang!
Tia and Tulia covered their ears and Tiati covered her eyes – but tears kept rolling down her face.
"T-Too...T–"
Bang!
"Too–"
Bang!
"T–T'HIEEeeeeeeeee......"
Tiati's voice drifted up towards the enormous skylight, hanging on the final reverb of the last gunshot...No one said a word.
Her scream echoed for seven seconds, seven seconds as a million copies of herself crashed over and over Tooth like a broken separation. It was only four days. That's all it had been. Four days.
...and now look what they'd become, what they'd all become.
Jack and Aster bent forward and breathed heavily, their noses practically touching the floor as they tried to find solace in silence. Whatever Pitch had shot them with, it was something poisonous, something that...that made their Center genes freeze up and fall stationary. It didn't flare up with energy like it always did, it couldn't! And that wasn't good enough! That wasn't–
"W...Why didn't you..."
Tooth's voice suddenly cracked through the silence that had fallen, unable to understand or see.
"Why didn't you run?! I..."
Jack's lips pulled back with embitterment, exhaling raw and hard through his teeth.
She felt sick.
"I told you run! I...n-no. No, you had like, th-thirty seconds! You had thirty and...No, P-Pitch, y-you've got thirty seconds"
Tooth thrashed again. "You've got thirty seconds to release my sisters or so help me I-I–"
"Or what...Tooth?" He tightened his grip over her eyes.
"You'll stick a quarter under my pillow?"
She fell still with fear.
"How are even going to get them out? How did you even get them out in the first place? ...How?" A chuckle left his graying lips.
"Oh, boys...you may want to get a good look at her majesty." His was low and with a tone unbefitting a royal, as if her title was a joke unworthy of proper emphasis.
"N-No don't...no, don't I–"
But even though Jack's head was swimming, he lifted his head.
The shadows distorted.
The moonlight took over the dome. And in disquieted terror–
"...can't see...I-I can't see..."
Pitch stilled.
Toothiana was tight in his hands. His dark glove sat over her head, covering her eyes, but even under the tight leather, the princess knew that no matter what she tried, she'd never shake him off.
She could smell the sharp, expensive material of his glove as an empty smile slowly appeared on his skin.
"I told you...in time, you would be mine."
Jack paled, his heart touched with fear.
"...n' don't touch me!" Tooth breathed unevenly and squared her shoulders against him. "Don't touch me! Don't–"
Clich.
She froze. She tried to distract him with a head turn, reaching for her gun at her thigh. The sound of a shotgun's safety lock going off stopped her indefinitely.
Her fingers hung suspended over her holster.
But Pitch didn't even look at her.
"Try anything," he tested, "send a decoded message, so much as twitch...and you'll get to play Agatha Christie, love, playing murder mystery and all Guessing, Who Killed Who?"
...Never negotiate with a terrorist.
Aster's voice was a dying mantra in her head, further and further until she no longer remembered. Tooth's chin trembled in terror. Slowly, she pulled moved away from her gun, miserable and blind.
If Pitch was more forgiving, he would have almost laughed – finally she knew how to take orders.
"Now it's your turn."
With his other hand, Pitch bound Tooth's wrists in the same steel cuffs as the other two. In black alloy, it wrapped around her skin, sending the sensation of cold imprisonment shook through her heart. And against her own conviction, a whimper left her throat.
Pitch's glare turned distasteful.
"Oh there's nothing to be afraid of, there's no such thing as...the boogeyman," he said, clearly aware of the slight change in Jack's muscles.
He leaned down slightly.
"I just need an honest answer, the one you're obviously hiding about your little pixie sisters."
Tooth shook her head.
"What's the secret, princess?"Pitch whispered.
Everyone watched as the muscles behind her eyes, covered beneath Pitch's gloved hand, started to tighten and squeeze. Her voice became tiny, distant...almost different.
"What's the secret?" he sang.
She shook her head harder.
"I w'n...Iwon't–"
But when he tightened his glove around her like a cobra, she let out a petrified squeal.
"TOOTHIE!"
"TOOTH, NO–"
"PRINCESS, DON'T! D-DMFMM!"
A black cloth suddenly appeared and wrapped around Aster's mouth from behind. He yelled and yelled yet nothing changed, and the sisters screamed helplessly as Jack and Tatiana were gagged too.
"Mfhmm!"
"Fmghmmmf!"
Tooth's heart was thunderous in her chest and every nerve that started from where Pitch touched her and ended to where he stood behind her, stung and spread pain across her skin. She shrivelled to almost nothing and felt like the lump in her throat would never disappear.
Panting for air, she turned her head a little.
'Don't be afraid!' But her tongue was dry. 'D-Don't be afraid...stop.. S-STOP IT–'
Tat shrieked.
"Mfmmmm!"
But no one did anything, no one could.
Bang!
A loud crack like lightning went off as another boomerang light was blown out.
Pitch's henchmen ripped more chaos throughout the dome, and as the frightened shouts and portentous stomp of boots only increased, Tooth whimpered louder.
"G-Girls!...Don't...I'm g-g..."
She bent her head shakily twist out of his touch.
"I-I'm r...r-right here! Ri-Right here! We're g-gonna...w-we're gonna get–"
Bang!
"Girls!"
"...You..."
Bang!
"GIRLS!"
"...are...my sunshine..."
She froze.
"...my only sunshine..."
Bang!
His voice was empty, lacking of all emotion, but as Pitch's absolutely remorseless lullaby – his fake attempt to soothe Tooth's sisters – mixed with the bullets going off, Tooth started to shake.
She felt nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing.
Jack fell silent behind his gag and Pitch paused for one dead second to laugh softly under his breath and as the boy dragged his sapphire gaze back around to Tooth.
The melody sunk in...
"You make me..."
His face blanched of color and the hair on his neck rose. He landed his horrified gaze on her face, her chin – his pulse started to race.
"You make me...happy..."
Jack shouted her name, but the mouth cover muffled his words.
"Mmf!"
Tooth's mouth moved for words –
"...when skies are grey."
She stopped abruptly.
Jack's heart froze in his chest, energy low or not, he felt it. He watched her lower lip start to tremble violently, every quiver sending a violent pang through his chest.
It something he couldn't stop, something he couldn't protect–
"M-h...st singing," she mumbled singing. "...ple–stop sing'g–"
"M-Mhm!" Aster choked.
Creeping across his chest and striking Jack everywhere like needles, his breath grew shallow.
Frigid air left his lungs as her choking… her whimpers…
She let out an unbearable whine.
"M...Mhhf!" he choked.
Jack was a GUARDIAN, a fucking protection services agent and, God forbid, an elite escapist with so much he could do with his bare hands, and he...he was losing!
He was exposed, pathetic, draining energy faster than a battery, and...
"Mmhmmf!"
...Pitch was holding in front of him, the one person who'd changed his mind, who'd saved his life, purified his previously iced heart… and he was dangling her in his hands like she was nothing.
And freaks, aren't worth anything.
Jack watched her teeth chatter as a bead of sweat rolled down her temple.
"You'll never know dear–"
Bang!
Another bullet was fired, taking out another light, and in the back of her throat, her sob became a plea and her face was scrunched so tight, her straight, white teeth shone in the diminishing light.
"...how much I love you…"
And Pitch lifted his free hand to prod the ends of her short, icy hair while she cried a little under her throat – Jack couldn't breathe.
He couldn't see her straight.
The dying adrenaline in his heart turned against him and started to eat under his ribcage–
"So please don't take..."
And the song.
"...my sunshine..."
Dear God, it was their song.
"...away."
Their song… for Emma… and the–
Bang!
Pitch's men finally stopped shooting.
They stood still, ghostly and silent in their seven feet bodysuits. Pitch gave them a long look.
"M-Mhf..." Tat choked. "M...M-Mhffmm!"
Tooth sobbed for air.
In its escape, it filled the room, making all eyes fall on her.
Her shaky crying bounced around the room. A piece of Pitch's hair was still hanging over his forehead from when he and Jack had fought but he was far too into the moment to care.
Pitch leaned down to her ear without any empathy.
He glared over her ear and sent goosebumps down her neck.
"...Where's your guardian now?"
...
Tooth whimpered heavily.
Everything had led her up to this moment, she knew that very well. But even as she tried to shake her head and bite it all down, she felt nothing like the strong, regal princess she'd thought she was...
But she'd be damned if she let gave Pitch any satisfaction no matter how much she thought she was losing and just who she might lose tonight.
She bit her lip, still shaking...still crying.
But Pitch flicked his changing eyes from her to the Nightmare suits in which the younger girls had been left as bait with a dark look.
"You still haven't revealed the full ramifications of your gene, princess," he said. "What are you hiding...and How did. You. Know?"
Toothiana's sisters looked at the suits, remembering how they'd almost been killed by Tooth's friends if she hadn't recognized them. Then they looked at her in scared curiosity. So did Aster.
But Tooth still couldn't see them and her imagination started to picture the worst. She'd already heard the worst.
"N...m–
"Tell us."
"I-I d'...I'n...N–"
"MFM–"
Jack's vision erupted with black spots.
"Ghmf!" Aster and the others started to panic. Jack's muffled shouts and Tiana's crying filled the room, but as Tooth attempted to move her numb lips to answer back–
"Pipe down or I'll stuff a pillow in you," Pitch swore under his breath.
Then he started moving his glove.
Slow and horrible, he dragged it down Tooth's face, uncovering her eyes and pulling her skin. Tooth panicked and felt sick as his glove moved across her eyebrows, her cheeks… her nose.
She freaked under his touch.
"Let me go! Let m–fhmf!Hmfmm!"
Jack stopped shouting behind his cloth.
And when he turned back to her–
"Mmhf!"
They turned too – and when Tooth looked back with wide eyes, eyes impossibly wider than they'd ever been in their life...
She nearly fainted.
Under the moonlit expanse of the dome, Jack, Aster and Baby Tooth were being gagged mercilessly, kneeling before Pitch at the hands of his men. The others were covered by the outer shadows, huddling close to the wall while the other hitmen stood silent and lifeless, like dead trees all around the dome.
But no one was safe.
No one was free.
And she was mad for taking so long, mad for letting Pitch get under her skin, mad for...for...
Her eyes grew blurry, her ribcage felt like it was twisting, but when Aster sensed her distress, he shook his head.
"Mhmm!"
But the gag!
'Fi-Fight 'im, Tooth!' he mentally shouted. 'Fight 'im!'
His green eyes were wide with calculations he couldn't solve – but she kept slipping gazes with him! Even when Jack's arctic blue eyes met hers, she couldn't hang on.
"My patience wears thin, Toothiana," Pitch said deeply.
Tooth attempted to look at BT, at the girls, at the boys–
Jack shook his head determinedly.
'Don't let him,' he was signalling furious, desperate, and strong.
'DON'T!'
Tooth tried to feel cold, tried to feel confident, she...she tried not to care.
She was trying but...She was trying and yet–
Her breath was loud and perverse, refusing to give her the succour she desperately needed. Everything was happening too fast and at the same time too slow, under a spotlight that pierced her skin and didn't provide warmth.
And while she had performed in front of people before, this wasn't a show.
And she wasn't the star…
…she was the freak.
"Princess!"
Tooth's eyes grew dry and the air felt thin. Her head was hurting, and his proximity made her chest grow tight and her nerves flush with unnamed pain again.
But she gritted her teeth, flaring her nostrils.
She didn't answer. Pitch lifted his other hand again and touched the inside of his coat pocket.
"Tell me how you knew!"
Tooth snarled bitterly. She growled at the back of her throat and kept looking ahead.
'Shut up! Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!'
BT looked up at her older sister in admiration, chest heaving against her binds.
It rose and fell with her angry pants–
Suddenly she threw her neck sideways.
"Mff!"
Her growl made Tooth look at her with adoration.
"Mhmf!" and she watched as her younger sister fought to get away but the assassin holding her wouldn't loosen his grip. Pitch's twisted face grew more twisted as a scowl erupted on his features.
"You think you can outfight me?" he taunted the clone. "You think you're special?!"
Pitch's disgusting insult made Jack's skin burn with intensity.
"Pmhf!"
He wanted to rip Pitch's heart out.
"Pmhf!"
Forget his moral compass for just one second!
"What are you hiding?" Pitch barked.
"Mfhmf!"
Tooth savagely spat under his glove and a slew of curse words none of them could hear tumbled from her mouth like acid.
"Mhhm fmm*** ghmf!
"Princess!"
"Fhm***jgmmff!"
"Princess!"
She refused to give him an answer, but she put everything in her small body to make it hard for him to hold her steady. Jack and Aster almost couldn't believe Tooth's sudden aggression; repeatedly jumping on her feet with angry shrieks, and trying to knock back into his chest with her skull.
"You insolent, little–"
"GURMGF***!"
At the princess's newfound fervent effort to break away, BT attempted to get out again. Jack and Aster snarled and dropped their limbs like stone despite their weak muscles, giving Pitch's men a hard time. Fierce and violent, they all started to twist around.
But when Pitch saw the rising chaos–
"Enough!" he lifted Tooth off the ground with his one hand, then hauled her to the concrete on her knees.
The moment her kneecaps hit the stone floor, she shouted in pain.
"Gyahh!"
"Mmf!"
"Mmmhmmf!"
Tooth coughed angrily and blinked down tears in her eyes.
"Whatever you're hiding, Princess, I will discover!"
Pitch let her go to tighten his glove with malevolence but she got away instantly, clenching her arm still locked behind her, clenching her teeth, clenching everything to lock it all up.
When Pitch moved for her again, she stared at his cruelty dead in the eye, terrified as hell but shoving her head forward a little.
Her face turned dark.
"Ge-Get away from me!" she growled and he pulled back with a slightly, perturbed look.
Tooth heaved under her breath with unwavering eyes and a heart like a dark stallion.
"You destroyed my family..." she hissed. Her fists clenched and unclenched like she was stabbing a Nightmare all over again.
"Y-You destroyed us! And I–"
She hated it, she despised it, but the adrenaline from the energy wanted to crash over her again and again – and she was sure she made more than anyone combined.
"G-Go on, hit me!" she snarled, shaking in her boots. But when she shoved again, Pitch pulled back.
"H-Hit me!"
She wanted to humiliate him, she wanted him to know that she was done being scared – even if her heart was set to explode at any given moment.
"Hit me! B-Because you'll never–"
And before Tooth could react, he covered her mouth.
"Mmf!"
BT cried but the Nightmare held her back.
She tightened her right hand in fear watching her sister pant through her nose again and thrash again.
"Mhmmf!"
Nothing made sense. Nothing felt right – even Jack and Aster didn't know what to do!
"Mmhf! Mhfmhm!"
Because what was Pitch doing? He… He had Tooth now, and that's who the entire operation was about, wasn't it?!
Jack suppressed the urge to scream again and dropped his head furiously.
He saw red.
He heard screaming.
"Toothiee!"
"Mmf!"
"M-Mmhfmff!"
But he needed to count, he needed to find his heart again beneath the cover of his bangs because...because Pitch clearly didn't want her sisters anymore because he'd set them up as killing targets almost five minutes ago!
But when Jack finished and he pulled his head up, ready to focus, ready to fight–
His heart skipped in this chest.
Pitch had been looking at him the whole time, waiting for him.
He wanted to see Jack's reaction.
We're not monsters. W-We're not.
But where was the GUARDIAN that used to be inside Pitch, behind...behind those cold eyes?
Jack had to believe there was a man not completely gone and, somewhere still inside them, wasn't there?
"I would've thought a spy, bred such as yourself," Pitch spoke, "would have been better at turning it all off. But you're not."
He forced Tooth's eyelids open.
"Mhhmm!"
Wasn't there?!
"You're better at keeping secrets, Jack," he whispered.
"...But are you, princess?"
Tooth screamed behind his other glove, in terror under the tips of his glove, squirming and shaking as he eyed something inside his pocket.
And before everyone could move, before Tooth could cry out–
He swiftly shoved his other hand into his pocket, removed the same black sand he'd used on the ELFs–
And blew it straight into her eyes.
"Mfhmmm!" BT shrieked.
The second Tooth started to cry and thrash around, the others screamed in complete horror.
"MMMMHF!"
"Mhmmhmf!"
Tiati started to cry.
"Le'...r go! Th-That's my si...s-s'ster! LE-LET HER GOOO!"
But Pitch held his grip tight, not giving Tooth the air she needed or remaining sanity she was desperately trying to claw for. She heard her youngest sisters, screaming and wailing, she heard Jack and Aster, and she tried to look for them, blinking rapidly and inhaling under the weight of Pitch's leather grip.
But he smothered her, with his hands and with his words.
"I asked for one thing, princess,"
"Toothieee!"
But Tooth couldn't hear her.
She couldn't hear anyone!
"I saw the look on your friends' faces. I heard the wonder. I remember your face. ...You communicated with them, yet you can't remember?"
They all sounded…faraway, like they were pulled away by the tide, leaving a feeling of bitter self-consciousness, of dejection...and exhaustion.
Absolute exhaustion.
Fatigue, weakness, tired bones...
Tooth suddenly stopped fighting Pitch.
"Mmhf?!" Jack shouted her name in a muffled cry.
"MMHF?!"
He watched as her knees crumpled in front of Pitch and her hair curtain around her face slightly. But he couldn't see her eyes… no one but Pitch could.
"MMHF!"
"Do you need a little help, your highness?" Pitch then slowly removed his hand from her mouth, giving her oxygen but not sight. His hand was still wrapped around her eyes as he watched the color drain from her face.
"Do you want them back? Your memories? …Is that why you can't tell me?"
He then eyed the little handmaidens crying against the wall.
"Go ahead, girls… scream."
But they covered their mouths and refused to.
"Hmhf!" BT kept crying.
"Mhmmmf!"
The pain in Jack's chest twisted so hard that when he exhaled, he wondered in distress if he'd cracked or fractured a rib or not, and meanwhile, Aster's control over his physical anxiety started to deteriorate. One of Pitch's elites tightened his grip on the hacker's shaking arms.
And Pitch looked at Tooth again, with a misshapen stare at the sand in her eyes.
"Took me a while to perfect this little trick...but go ahead, my dear," he taunted as he held the top of her head, "...have a little fun."
Her bottom lip quivered again.
"M-m...who...d–"
And everything flickered away and dark static blurred her view of the room.
...
4:31 a.m.
Violent sparks of black filled Tooth's vision.
She saw things...heard things...
"What's in your wonderland, princess?"
The room suddenly felt colder.
Sick feelings like slimy tendrils and cold fingers, latched themselves onto Tooth.
She felt less in control, more possessed, and whatever Pitch had done, he...she...
"What's in your wonderland?"
Tooth cowered away.
Her chest...
Her chest, it was like...
Tooth whimpered.
It was like he'd just taken something from it, leaving a hole.
A hole?!
A hole!
She could see straight into it.
"...don...n-n...No, I d–"
And the things that replaced where her heart was...they were slowly trying to crawl their way up into her head.
"It's Pi...i-it's...I–"
"He's not here, Tooth…"
The voice made her lax, made her tight and tired state hitch for just a moment.
"H...He's n...H-He's not?"
"You're safe, Tooth... Don't worry, I'm here."
But she felt alone.
She still felt all alone, and no matter what she did, she...she couldn't find anyone but–
"As l...s'long as he isn't...I can't...I-I can't, I–"
She froze when the static screeched in her ears and nearly blinded her in the dark.
In her paralyzed state, there were the dark memories of two people running...then there was her sitting alone on a bed with her hands over her ears...
Then a Nightmare...then a scream...and promises she kept and broke that made her shake her head over and over again.
"H-He...he can't–m...no! No!"
"Mhf fhmmf!" Aster cried, shaking his head.
"Hmmf!"
The voices outside of her head weren't making any sense – and the ones inside were tearing her apart!
"Well?"
"I d...I don't–"
"What, Toothiana? ...What?"
Tooth gasped for air.
She couldn't hear anyone...and was completely unaware that the other voice, the only one she could hear was Pitch himself.
"I don't...I don't want him to–"
Suddenly everything she wanted and feared flipped themselves on their back for her.
Tooth thought of school...
Followed Tiati's sobbing cries as they flew by...
She chased Jack's shadow as his face blurred with Pitch's–
"No! H-He… P-Pi–can't, I–" she hyperventilated.
Her hair went wild as she shook it in despair.
"...he c–I-I don't want him to–"
"What, Tooth?" Pitch finished for her in her ear. "You don't want him to… find out?"
And in her unguarded fear, she nodded.
"Y...Ye–"
"MHFMM!" Jack surged forward – only to be yanked back easily as his knife protruded from his gauntlet.
"DMMF HM–"
"Gmmhf!" Baby Tooth yelled for him, but the henchman Jack immediately gripped him around the neck, making him choke.
She snapped back at Tooth in distress.
"Mhf! M-Mhf!"
Tooth panicked in the blind.
"St...Stop it!" she choked. "Stop it!"
She thrashed around but it only made the black sand pierce her eyes deeper–
"N-No!"
Everything she'd ever wanted to keep hidden about herself started to show. Like a twisted video, the images played only for her eyes and all she wanted to do was run.
She heard the secrets she used to tell her sisters and the ones she kept from them...she saw the boys she'd kissed but never told a soul about, and the friends she was jealous of but never let them think she was...things she despised, things she loved, embarrassing moments and people who affected her more than she would ever admit...they all came up to the surface and there was nothing she could do.
There was nothing she could do about the shadows of Pitch that kept following her, or the one standing behind her.
And she started to cry when she saw pink eyes and blond streaks, mutated by birth and permanent for life.
"I can't t-tell'm..." she sobbed. "H-He can't know!"
The voices got louder. The secrets were trying to come up.
"Know what, princess?"
"He d-doesn't know! He... ab...my sisters he–"
Everyone started yelling at her in her head, they kept asking what she was hiding.
"P-Pitch can't know! He can't know that w...we're–"
"Know what?"
"I don't want him to!"
"What can't he find out?!"
Pitch pulled her head back so far that her neck hurt, Tooth cried out.
"Fi...out th-tha...he...he ca..." and she gulped "...tha-th-THAT WE'RE MENTALLY LINKED! H-HE CAN'T F-FIND OUT, JACK! HE–"
Pitch stopped.
The sisters all froze and as Aster's heart skipped a beat...Jack's terror upsurged dramatically.
"Mfm hmf!"
His heart fell into his stomach.
"MFFFM!"
His white bangs slapped wildly over his eyelashes, poking his vision, but she couldn't hear him over all her ragged, salty tears. She didn't even know what she was saying or what she was seeing, behind all the black sand on her skin.
And it tore him apart.
"(Stop, Tooth!)" he kept yelling, his words muffled by the gag over his mouth. "(STOP!)"
"H-HE CAN'T KNOW! I-If he knows, Jack–"
She choked and a violent twist in her heart made her sob.
"I-I open my eyes a-and...I-I'm a freak! ...I op-op'n my eyes and I...I'm Ta...T...I'm T-Tatiana–"
BT's blood ran cold.
"...a-and wh...I blink...I ca...I c-can be Ti-Ti...Tia–"
Tia lifted her head higher in her shock as Tooth kept confessing, still choking on her words and facing the skylight.
"So that's it..." Pitch said in slow, brewing triumph. He tightened his grip on her neck.
"That's it."
Her chin whimpered again and her eyes were still clouded.
The cold sweat felt like it was going to kill her.
"...or Tian...h-he' can't kn-know abo-about–"
"Toothie! S...S-Stop!" they cried for her from the sister's circle.
"He...H-He is listening to y–"
"Oh my god...and Tin...n–or Ti'a-ana too–"
"Stop!"
"–o-okay, Jack? O-Okay?!"
"STOP!"
"B-But he–"
"JUST STOOP!"
"BUT HE–"
"MHHHF!(STOOOP!)...M-mmf h-hmm..."
And when BT starting sobbing through her screams, Tooth froze...and she stopped too.
Baby Tooth's chest was rapid and she couldn't see straight – but she never looked once away from her sister.
"M-Mh...m-m..."
Pitch watched in silence.
Then suddenly, the princess turned her head under Pitch's grip, not quite sensing him and the rest of the crowd as they watched her hair twist under his glove, bending her wet strands and gold streak out like needles.
"...he can't know, Jack..." she cried and Jack's chest heaved up and down.
"Mmhf mf!" he pleaded as the moon shone blue light on her cold skin. "Mmmmf!"
"H-he can't know..." and she gulped, "th...that I'm a… I'm a l-looking glass."
And Pitch let go.
"MHMMMF!"
In a horrible mess, Tooth dropped her chin to her chest and heard her tears drip to the floor – she followed them in a tired descent to the floor, resting her cheek on the cold concrete.
"I'm a l...I'm glass...I-I'm glass..."
And when Pitch moved up, the boys and her sisters watched her tears drip freely down her face – with pink eyes dark from sand particles and hypnotized into obscurity.
"He can't fi...out, Jack..." she murmured tiredly.
Jack watched in slow motion as a tear dripped off the edge of her nose.
"H...He can't."
'Where's the light, Tooth? ...and wh-where's the warmth?'
Tooth then stilled altogether, watching the horrible nightmarish static continue to cloud her vision...just as Pitch leaned down and wiped her cheek for her with the back of his hand.
"There, there," he mumbled with feigned care.
"Shh, shh...It's all right..."
Tooth sobbed under the knuckle his cold glove, feeling the tough material rub her cheeks dry and pull the moisture from her tear ducts.
"It's all right...he doesn't know..."
As he dragged it sideways though, the responsive agent in his glove magnetized all the black sand particles on her face and they pulled themselves from Tooth's wet skin and stuck to his hand. BT cried heavily and stared at her blind sister lying on the ground, looking at nothing and in their broken connection, Jack's wind fell at his fingers like a feather, turning his cold sweat to frost.
Pitch smirked as he watched the artificial grains leave her eyes but as the last particle was removed, he pulled away with a satisfied look.
"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you all like this, princess," he said.
Then he got up and watched until Tooth shifted her head...and crawled at the concrete with a heavy gasping.
"...You look awful."
She exhaled shakily.
...
4:42 a.m.
Tooth's jewel-pink orbs grew large with waking trepidation.
The demons in her static vision and the voices filling her head, suddenly died away.
She gasped for air, coming up like water.
"Mm...I-I w–"
Straight away though, she felt...wronged.
Worse than having been lied to.
More hurtful than betrayal.
No, it was like the sinking feeling...of violation.
"Mmhm!" Aster gasped under his heavily sedated weight and watched her push herself up on her elbows slow and painful. Jack's dark eyes never strayed from her once even as he struggled.
Tooth didn't look at them.
Gasping with sudden anger and cold sweat, she looked around for a moment trying to find the source.
Where did the horrible static go? And the voices? Scared of where she'd just poured her heart out and wondering why everything was still completely dark except for the blue light from the moon, she turned and lifted her head – and instantly realized...
It had been real.
It had been Pitch.
"N...n-no..."
And as he confirmed it by moving away from her entirely, stepping out in front of her, her emotional strength shattered–
"No!"
And her heart cracked in two.
"NO!"
Pitch chuckled in dark amusement as he walked backwards, lifting his arms a little.
"Look at what you've done!" he outright laughed as he stopped to stand just beside Jack and Aster. When he came to a complete standstill, he reveled in the sight of her standing all by herself on the other side of the dome.
"Look at what...you've...done!"
But Tooth didn't share the same sentiment.
"Me?! M...ME?!"
In her heavy gasps for air and her raging emotions, she narrowed her eyes at Pitch.
And she screamed.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Her voice carried through the chill of the room, spreading so high up around the dome that it sung through every dark ladder and bounced off of every platform. Tooth's eyes were red with rage, her shoulders shaking as her scream, hoarse and ripping her throat apart, hit the floor.
Tooth bared her teeth with a fury she never felt before. In her tormented wrath, Jack, Aster, and the girls were taken aback into stunned silence. Toothiana had never sounded so angry and all her newfound fury was unsettling.
"M-Mmf!" Aster cried and tried to get up, but it didn't work – but Pitch didn't care for the trauma.
Tooth watched as his face cracked into a mad grin that could've given the Joker a run for his money.
"A praise to Rashmi, our dear Fairy Queen!" he shouted at her gleefully. "For actually being capable of producing a fighter! I didn't think you had it in you, princess."
"SHUT UP!" she roared.
She didn't even feel the cold, she was so livid that the anger coursing through her ignited her chest with fire.
"SHUT UP!"
"And hell, while we're at it, let's thank Project GUARDIAN altogether," and he drop-kicked Aster in the torso and made the tech analyst grunt with pain and see stars. "Let's thank the very men (he kicked) and women (and kicked) for making the gene in the first place, and giving life to insignificant individuals such as yourselves (and kicked one more time). Let's thank everyone."
Then he walked to BT.
But when he got close to Tatiana and went to grab her hair–
"DON'T TOUCH HER, Y–"
Bang!
Pitch stopped.
"..."
After pulling back completely from Tatiana, Pitch turned to face Tooth with a silvery glare. She was actually on her feet again, ready to move! But one of his elites was still aiming a gun at her, with a shot not intended to kill, but just enough to make her shriek and slip on her feet. When she caught herself and gritted her teeth, she threw him a look hot enough to melt his skin.
"Y-YOU'RE A MONSTER!"
Pitch's teeth copycatted hers in a dark showdown.
"And you," he seethed lucidly. "You're the original, the hybrid, the only one who has ever survived a non-injected gene. And now you say, you can see into the eyes...of your clones?"
He swiftly turned on his heel and leaned down to BT.
"Did you know that?" he asked her with a coquettish frown. When Tat didn't answer and tried to look down and away from the grey-skinned madman, he forcefully lifted up her chin.
"Come now? You didn't know?"
When she shirked out of his hold, he patted her lightly on the cheek–
"Tell me."
–then grabbed a handful of her hair.
"Tell me!"
Baby Tooth whimpered loudly and shut her eyes.
Jack screamed through his gag, feeling every nerve in his body twitch like violent ropes. Every flicker of the tunnels came back to grab him around the heart – but Pitch was merciless.
"You didn't know?" he taunted viciously.
BT shook her head in fear, feeling her hair flying around.
"M-m...h-hmm!" she whimpered behind the cloth before she turned her head away from Pitch.
She couldn't believe she let Tooth down again...
When he let go, the man pulled back up and smiled at the princess again.
"Well, then, it looks like you've kept an awful lot of secrets from everyone, your highness...haven't you?"
Baby Tooth opened her eyes again, trying to push down the wetness to look at her older sister.
She shook her head solemnly.
The sisters wanted to cry.
It wasn't Tooth's fault. Nothing had ever been Tooth's fault!
She wanted to scream stop and please and every word that equated to I'm not mad. I love you and I'm not mad, Tooth!
But Toothiana didn't see any of it.
Instead, the rage she'd unleashed started to crack again.
She had no foundation, nothing on which to stabilize her rushing emotions. No backup, and no return fire for when Pitch took another hit at her heart.
And he hit hard, dousing out the flame and spitting on her spirit.
She wouldn't let it go.
Tooth kept trying to open her mouth to apologize, to say she hadn't known about it until two days ago, to utter a name, or even sing a song out of desperation, anything!
But she was stuck – her entire face felt like it was anaesthetized.
Why was everything getting harder?
What was the penalty for...just being you?!
"It's all right, princess..."
Tooth trembled where she stood, looking for Jack or Aster.
When she dragged her wet eyes slowly from BT, they moved up to Pitch again, and his gaunt features and high cheekbones.
"...we have prizes for liars, too."
Then the Nightmare King walked right back up to her, lifting something from one of his pockets.
And when she looked down in his cold, ashen grip...
Tooth saw one, thick syringe.
At the sight of it, dread pooled into her stomach and under Pitch's sharp gaze, he saw her boot shift slightly behind her.
"W...What are you doing?"
And he smiled.
He smiled.
Like he'd won.
"W-What are you doing?!"
"Mfmh!" Aster cried.
The tech analyst blinked twice to bring the moisture back to his sight and craned his neck.
But nothing – nothing – could make him see Pitch better!
It was frightening that Pitch's 6'9 shadow blocked what he was holding, what he was doing, but from the terror in Toothiana's voice, it wasn't good.
As it happened, the shadows at Pitch's feet started to stretch and rotate themselves. Tatiana automatically wriggled and whined in fear when the shadows' ends touched Tatiana's bare feet.
When she yelped in fear, Pitch finally turned to look at her over his shoulder.
There was a moment of silence, so thick and heavy, Tooth was sure her knife could have cut through it.
She shook her head… she shook her head but then–
"Toss her," Pitch ordered.
"WHAT?! B–"
BT suddenly screeched behind her cloth.
"Tati–"
Jack and Aster reacted violently, thrashing their heads forward.
"No...n-NO!"
But the elite Nightmare holding her violently threw her aside.
Jack and Aster shouted through their gags, and Tooth couldn't believe it.
"T...T-Tatiana!"
Baby Tooth hit the concrete with a painful cry, landing in a crumpled heap just before her other sisters. Almost immediately, Tia and Theena scrambled to her in tears from the circle to pull her in before Pitch separated them. But Tooth's sisters were still beyond the outer shadows where the disappearing moon couldn't touch them, and she could see nothing.
"T...T-Ta–"
Tears slipped down her cheeks, and when Jack saw them, his breathing turned hoarse and frenzied, like a man suffocating under the weight of his pain.
"Mhmmmf!"
His adrenaline fell to almost nothing and he watched horrifically as his head slipped sideways from sudden exhaustion. If this was what Sanderson did when he inflicted his sleep gene on criminals, then Jack decided that Pitch's sedative strong enough to take out GUARDIAN was really… dreadfully close.
"H-Hmmf..."
Everything hurt… everything ached.
"Tell me princess, do you like games?"
...
Jack's eyebrows flew up under his bangs.
"H-Hm...f-fmhm!"
"L...m-me alone," she sobbed angrily. "R...L-Leave me alone!"
"If you think you can test me with ignorance, you only succeed in testing my patience, Thia," Pitch frowned. "Now take a look at this syringe for me?"
Pitch then brought his needle to her face.
She gasped angrily and reeled away from him with wide, terrified eyes.
"Now guess."
"Guess what?!"
"Play the game, your highness, play the game," he said. "For their safety, you'd better give me an answer. So what is in this vial?"
He then waved the syringe in the dying moonlight, watching her mouth stall.
For their safety? Their safety?!
"Wh–I...H–"
He then pulled off the needle cover.
"Tick tock… tick tock."
And her blood ran cold.
But no one was safe the longer Pitch talked; not the ELFs… not North… not Mr. Sandy, they–
Tooth hunched over slightly as her eyes moved back and forth from the syringe, to the guys and to her sisters like a torture game.
This wasn't fair. This wasn't how things were supposed to turn out.
They'd been so close. They had almost...they were almost–
"I...It's...H-How can you–"
The darkness grew larger, spreading incessantly over the room, and the moon was finally ready to leave the dome's skylight. In its dying moonbeams, she looked at the floor and the needle simultaneously.
And the anger… and the fear!
Hot and cold were swelling within her. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry.
"It's...I-I...No y–"
"Think, your highness!" he whispered glaringly, just as the last of the moon touched a piece of the concrete floor, the darkness waiting to consume everyone and everything.
"What could I be hiding… in this tiny little vial?"
But how could she know?!
Because the shadows were Pitch's Center gene's specialty, they were all going to lose - hell, they were all going to die in about three seconds if she didn't come up with a good reason for why, in all the seven gates of hell, he would terrorize her with a needle from one of his absolutely twisted mint collections–
Her brain stopped.
Aster and Jack yelled again.
The older clones watched.
Pitch sensed the falter and looked her in the eye.
"3..."
And just as the last of the moon disappeared behind the hole of the skylight–
"2..."
And the returning rainclouds of another storm, the last of the blue light left with it–
"1–"
Tooth looked up at his face in absolute terror.
She was white as a ghost.
"...what did you do?"
And the darkness blanketed them all...for about nine seconds.
...
4:49 a.m.
The lights at the top, circling around the dome, lit up instantly.
Blinding everyone in yellow light for a moment, Tooth's pupils shrunk and she started to shake.
And when she blinked, Pitch was suddenly standing between Jack and Aster.
He had one hand leisurely resting behind his back, while the other held the syringe up high to catch the sudden illumination in the room.
"Come on, love," he spoke and both boys jumped uncharacteristically in their skin.
"Mfm!"
"Ghhfm!" they lashed out in response.
But Pitch's ghost assassins yanked their heads back and he paid them no heed.
"Say what you think I'm carrying," he continued. "Say it."
No one noticed Jack's sudden paralysis as he stopped fighting.
I want you to say it… SAY IT!
He looked at Tooth.
"Mhf..." he choked. "Mmhf!"
But by then, she'd already moved her tense jaw and was focusing solely on not crying.
"P..."
Tooth lowered her eyes and stared all around. She felt like her entire body was shrivelling up to nothing.
When the words tried to leave her lips, she thought she'd turned to ash and blow away on Jack's North wind.
"Pe...P-Pe–"
"Pe...what?"
The sisters all squeezed their eyes shut, waiting for her to say it.
Tooth choked.
"P-Peppermint."
Pitch paused.
He rubbed the apparatus slowly.
"The very same," he muttered. "The flavor you put in your toothpaste to make your teeth shine. The natural ingredient that makes the Center gene thrive. And the reason why you, your copies, and every GUARDIAN still left on the planet, carry unmutated blood in your veins."
Jack and the others looked at the sinister needle in disquiet.
"But this is not just any chemical composition of menthol."
And Pitch lifted the syringe, his tone carrying anything but joviality. Instead, it turned placid.
"Thia, my dear, this vial contains a very potent mixture of peppermint oil. Its highest concentration of pesticides there is, in fact."
When Pitch looked up, he was able to catch the image of Toothiana choking as her breath hitched in her throat.
And he smiled.
"Oh, so… you have heard of it?"
But as Pitch drew nearer, Tooth said nothing to neither confirm nor deny it – and when he took a step forward, he felt like a cat catching a mouse by its tail.
"Well, you should have," he admonished slowly for everyone to hear, "seeing as it is made with the plants straight from your island."
Jack and Aster's blood ran cold, as their centers finally when to sleep – but they hung on every word like limp bone to bubblegum.
They shirked their bonds angrily and looked at Tooth at the exact same time.
She repressed the urge to swear at him and gritted her teeth.
"What's the matter? Getting emotional again?" he growled, to which the princess shut her eyes to shut him out.
But suddenly, images smacked her between the eyes with endless plots of green.
She saw fields and fields of mint leaves, felt their soft leaves brush under her fingertips when she ran through them as a little kid… she heard the friendly shouts of the Lulu farmers who wore large hats and grew the plants for the country to sell, and remembered the warm sun on her face–
"Wh-Why...why're..." she cried. "Why are you–"
Because like all things peppermint, she loved every single form it took; she loved it all. The paste, the floss, the gum, the tea, and the oil… meant for healing the sick.
"T...T-Toothie!"
But Toothiana clenched her teeth and shook her head, feeling something dark drip into her stomach and flare up like a toxin.
A toxin she knew well.
"I kn...I know what you did. I kn-know!" she shouted. "So what do you want?!"
"...But do they know?" Pitch asked.
And her heart cracked a little.
She wanted to push her hands into her hair.
"Tell me princess, what do your handmaidens fully understand about the effects of its oil? Or say, your dear GUARDIANs?"
Tia might have known since she read a lot.
"And really, do you even know yourself?"
Pitch twirled the syringe in his fingers.
"Quiz time, for our lovely student!" he taunted, watching her eyes snap open. "And since she is so adamant on not joining in my little operation, allow me the pleasure of providing incentive!"
He then took three steps back...and grabbed Aster's head.
"FMHM!" Jack shouted and Aster yelled out as the terrorist gripped his head tightly and lifted the syringe with his other hand.
"STOP IT!" Tooth screamed. "STOP IT!"
But when she made a step forward–
Bang!
"AAH!"
A bullet went off near her feet.
She turned her head.
The elite Nightmare remained perfectly locked on her and as she trembled back in her fear...the other two started to raise their weapons at Jack and her sisters.
Her heart felt like it was decaying in her chest.
"Y...Y-Y–"
"Oh, stop you're whining," Pitch leered and shot Jack a glance. "It's no wonder you two have remained together, you're both excellent when it comes to pleading and… making bad decisions."
He then turned back to Aster.
"I am not in this profession for the thrill of blood, remember that," he snarled and gripped Aster's hair tighter.
"I do not find pleasure in torture and kidnapping, or whatever sardonic delight there is in ending lives with my own hands. I am only in this… for the profit… and the reputation."
Tooth's mouth was palpitating so hard she couldn't open her mouth without it twitching madly.
Pitch looked at her again.
"So welcome to the life you've chosen, your highness. There is no emotional attachment to what I do, or what the GUARDIAN program has already done. So I do not kill unless it is to obtain for my means, my manufacturers, and my buyers, and for destruction I can help start without getting my fingers dirty."
"Fmh mhrm! Mfm–"
Pitch kicked Aster in the torso again and watched as the TA choked behind his cloth gag.
"Go suck an egg," he seethed and pulled up his head again.
"This isn't about you two."
The terrorist then looked at Tooth again.
"This was always about her," he said lividly, and she watched more of his hair fall into his eyes.
"And now, princess, here's your question: What would happen if I injected pure peppermint oil into this poor bloke's bloodstream?"
He then pulled back a little to glare down at Jack and around to the girls.
"Or, let's not show favoritism to the otherwise mutated. What would happen if I injected this high concentration into anyone's skin?"
Tooth caught the pale yellow tint of the liquid sloshing around inside the vial.
She couldn't believe what she was hearing, and the emotions she felt seemed endless.
"Wh–I ca...m-mo–"
But she stopped.
Pitch whirled on her.
"What?" he pressed charily. "Nothing?"
No one said anything.
And as Pitch gave them all one long sweep with his eyes, he pushed his hair back over his skull and held the needle up.
"I inject this," he explained, "and you give that heart four minutes to go into cardiac arrest… and then it will stop… and die."
"W...What?!"
Tiati started to cry.
"Or… say I spread this on your skin. You'll wish it were acid instead."
Then he abruptly let go of Aster and grabbed the front of Jack's face, covering his eyes like he'd done to Tooth.
"And if a GUARDIAN–"
Tooth wanted to vomit.
"JA–"
"–gets too close to this dosage, well… I don't know what will happen, but the Center gene has been very picky about its… pH levels."
And he tossed a glare at Tooth's sisters who were all mutated and writhing in pain.
"So at menthol's highest concentration… I don't think your precious Centers will survive, just like all the rest who have come before you."
And when he let go of Jack, Pitch looked at her.
"So, Toothiana..." he said in a low voice.
She looked up at Pitch's glaring, yellow eyes from Jack's urgent, blue ones…
He grabbed a handful of Jack's white hair instead, relishing in how he didn't get the chance to earlier.
"...there are 22 Nightmare vessels along this coastline, ready to set a course for Punjam Hy Loo...and aboard each of them are 52 tons worth of crates filled with oil vials, ready to unleash onto your people."
"Twent...t...fif–"
And nothing was stronger than the mantle that seemed to fall on her chest.
'What happened to Christmas mornings?' she gasped in her head. 'A-And donuts? And computer games? And my sisters? And school?...My coun...M-My island, he's gonna...H-He's–'
Tooth's eyes started to fall downcast and her shoulders slowly curled in as her sisters started to yell what was wrong.
Jack's eyebrows flew up.
"Fmhf!?"
But Tooth...Tooth, she was–
"Gm mhfm fmhmf!" he drew one breath in the moment.
(Look at me, Tooth!)
Her mouth fell open for air again.
"MFMHM FMHMM!"
(LOOK AT ME!)
Jack tried to move to her, reach for her–
"Hmfm! Mhmfm!"
But all it did was catch Pitch's attention, not hers.
"Ahaha…" the terrorist laughed at him as he tossed Jack's head aside and started to walk towards the princess again, "…such a gentleman."
Where were you during my prom?...call...Call me kitten again.
Jack gasped for air.
The familiar word drove a spike so hard into his chest.
"F...F-Fmhmm!"
"Oh and, let's not forget about the children," Pitch said. "With their tiny little chests and beating hearts..."
Jack heard her sisters try to shout at her.
His cloth grew moist from his ragged breaths.
But Tooth was still frozen with fear. And as Pitch walked back to her again...
...he removed one glove.
"Mmmhf!"
But by the time her name left his lips, with one sweep of his fingertips, Pitch touched her forehead.
And his fear gene erupted with life.
"MMMMHF!"
Pitch's prisoners all yelled out to the princess and one of the TENEBRIS assassins fired a bullet in the air to shut them up.
"SILENCE!"
But Tooth couldn't hear them; she couldn't hear anyone.
She saw a country engulfed in flames, felt the heat from the fires, smelled the burning skin. All the children were coughing and crying through their lungs as their respiratory systems burned away… and in the distance stood thousands of men and women dressed in black, with glowing yellow eyes and price tags around their necks.
Tooth bit back a cry as tears rolled down her cheeks.
She finally understood.
She finally knew exactly what Pitch wanted from her.
"HFM MFH MHMM! (YOU CAN'T DO THIS!)" BT screamed.
"Y...You can't ha-have me!" Tooth sobbed.
"Y-YOU CAN'T HAVE ME!"
"On the contrary, I am at the height of my reign, princess. And you have fallen from your throne! YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE."
She shut her eyes and moved around in her steel manacles.
"No, you don't, you can't! YOU–"
Bang!
"Gyah!"
Tooth's concealed bloodied knife (the one that she'd managed to fish out) dropped from her hands as a deep hot pain cut her arm. When she screamed, it fell behind her in a loud clatter and the cut in her sweater showed.
Pitch was on his henchman in seconds.
Without a sound, he reappeared before the agent could react and shot him in the back of his head.
"Did I make a call on her life?!" he roared as the body fell and Tooth shut her eyes.
"Just say what you want! J-JUST SAY WHAT YOU WANT!"
"I wanted to clone myself, but I can't. Nor the GUARDIANs, nor your own clones!"
When the three youngest clones started to cry again, Tatiana, Tia and Tiana cocooned them with clenched teeth.
"Shut him out," they whispered panic-stricken. "Sh-Shut him out."
"Decay seems to be the only product from extraction and even with your precious mint leaves, look at your mother….Look at your successor."
He was talking about Baby Tooth and she lifted her head, throwing them a scared, chimerical look.
"She may be the only copy of you most successful, albeit physically altered," he spat as BT's neon blue and purple eyes grew round and wet. "But her gene is weak, still weaker than yours, dear Tooth. She cannot fly, cannot speak multiple languages–"
"SHUT–"
"She cannot do anything but heal herself. And why? ...Because she does not carry the original strand."
When Aster jerked forward again, the Nightmare got fed up with his resistance and choked him tighter around the neck.
When he coughed, Toothiana turned to him.
"Edm–" Pitch stalked back to her with murder in his eyes.
"They are your copies," he silenced her. "You think I would waste my time with duplicates who carry only the diluted remnants of the Center Gene?!"
As he drew near to the end of his rage, he lifted the syringe and shoved the glass side of the vial to her forehead.
"I only needed them for what you gave them: their endurance…for that incorruptible skin that covers your bones!"
Tooth gritted her teeth.
'Stop crying...STOP CRYING!'
"Stop it! …STOP IT!"
"The nine of you have a skin so unrelenting that nearly all chemical and viral agents do not affect you..."
Jack suddenly remembered Moscow like a blinding car crash.
"Jack?!"
"You don't have any..."
Toothiana's skin was still a warm, healthy glow of golden brown and flawless as ever. She was smooth and soft in his touch and the chain from her royal necklace twinkled up at him under the warehouse lights before it disappeared under her coat...
The princess didn't have any dark skin patches or eerie veins like the rest of them – she didn't even look like she was hurting anywhere.
"Do you feel any pain?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
Jack took a step forward. Tooth eyed the white injector in his hand and frowned. She looked up at him again, lifting her hands and doing a quick spin to showcase her health.
"Honestly, Jack. I'm okay," she answered softly. "But are you?"
...
"–set, all eight have so far appeared healthy and unaltered. I doubt she will ever experience irritation or infection – her lack of chicken pox history is proof of that."
And the worst of it was that the last part was true.
"...and thanks to that, I've been able to experiment over and over on their center genes until I'd slaved in enough hours to find the one that finally worked!"
And Tiana curled her twisted arm in closer to her body, while Tina leaned on her in exhaustion from the low red blood cell count in her body.
They all fell silent, no longer wanting to cry and yell at a man who wasn't even listening. In their silence, they each decided to save their energy; to conserve it…. And then they'd run, help each other, and attack when they got the chance – and they knew they would.
Tooth had taught them that.
'Cry if you need to… but there is always a chance at something so don't give up!'
"Don't g-giv'up..." Baby Tooth whispered in their circle and hugged them tighter. "D-Don't giv'up."
"And now that I have the Center gene stimulant, I need more. So, what do I want, princess?"
The other sisters nodded meekly for Tatiana.
"What do I want?"
And Jack watched through his messy bangs as Pitch's shadow slowly started to turn and head back for Tooth.
And Pitch bared his teeth.
"I want what I have always wanted… Mass production. And you… are going to split yourself into thousands of clones for me."
She gaped at him incredulously, seeing him for the monster he really was.
"WH–"
"And for every new copy, I will experiment… and this gene, your center? …I will find the means to change it, make it new… and make a new army of guardians."
"Mmm!"
Aster cried as a terrible ice touched his heart and made him picture the worst.
"FHFMM!"
But when Pitch grabbed Tooth's hair, she screamed out and Jack's immense sea of emotions shot through him like a bullet.
"G-GET AWAY FROM M–"
"They will be at my command," he snarled and shook her head. "And you, for all your unnatural creation, will direct their operations and watch them! You will watch them for me through that pretty, little mind of yours–"
"Don't touch me! DON'T TOUCH ME OR–"
"Or what?!"
And just as fast as he let go of Tooth...
...he had Jack's hair in an iron grip and pulled his head back.
"Jack!"
"HMFMMM!"
"DECIDE," Pitch roared.
"No, I...N-No!"
"Rebuilding the center gene and all its progeny is my legacy… it is my right!"
And he bent Jack's neck backward so far that all his white swirls spilled over his head and gave Jack a full view of the black skylight over them.
"You're sick!" Tooth screamed. "YOU'RE SICK!"
But her heart was beating so fast and she started to see black spots erupt in her eyes as her body started to convulse.
"This is your ultimatum, Toothiana."
And Pitch lifted the other hand with the syringe in it.
"Give yourself!"
"Let go of him!"
Jack tried everything in his power to force his head back up against the terrorist's grip – but when he only got a glance over her disheveled face, Pitch nearly broke something in his neck and he grunted painfully as his head fell backwards again.
"HFMGM!" Aster cried and Jack's eyes blurred slightly from the tension.
His fingers twitched but without his strength, he caught no wind. The skylight was so high and swirled with darkness in his vision.
Almost like clouds.
"TAKE THE OFFER! Or I inject this oil, the very essence of who you are, into the hearts of everyone you love, and send those ships straight for Punjam Hy Loo."
"Mm hmjmm fm–" Jack choked and his pupils suddenly started to shrink.
The damp cloth around his mouth started to drop in temperature with his sporadic air control.
His finger started to zing with pain, his left ear was buzzing.
Tears leaked down her cheeks.
"L-LET GO OF HIM!"
Aster and BT shouted behind their cloths and the handmaidens bit their lips as their resilience started to crack.
"NO!"
"Last chance, your grace! If you reject me, those vials all get dumped into the waterways of your island."
And for a moment Tooth saw a million copies of herself, in short, black dresses; price tags around their necks, too–
"NO!"
"Well, then say goodbye to your country, your birthright, and everyone," and Pitch lifted the needle and aimed precisely for Jack's jugular vein. "Everyone that you care about!"
Jack screamed. Tooth pleaded. The cold air deformed the saliva in his gag.
"Jack, l-look at me!"
He looked up instead.
"Look at me!"
He yelled to the ceiling, and stared up into the shadows.
And as frost violently spread across his black mouth cover–"JACK!"
...beep.
...beep.
beep.
beeeeep.
Chapter's soundtrack: "If the World Should End" (Spider: Turn off the dark Musical Soundtrack) – Jennifer Damiano. I also used "Reign of the Dark" – Adrian von Ziegler (suggested by bloodstep and is also one of Pitch's official tracks, thanks for introducing me to such a talented dark film composer!)