The Star-Crossed Guardians

Chapter Seven- Another One Bites the Sand

While the others were fighting on the ground, I rushed to Eris and Lethe, notching an arrow and pulling back as far as I could.

"Eriiiiis!" I yelled. Quite stupidly, I might add. She turns towards me as I release the arrow. She waves her hand and an octopus takes the hit, immediately disappearing into nothing. She pulls a bow out of the shadow of the tower and flies toward me, pulling an arrow back and releasing it. I swat it away. She sends another, but I swat it away again. I am close enough to reach her now! I bring my bow down upon her head, but she pulls her bow up at the same time. There is a flash of pink and black and I lose consciousness.

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'You have to come out of your room sometime, Jackie.'

'I can't! I have to finish this report! If I don't, I might get demoted, I don't know.'

'You're the best there is at researching. They won't demote you. You're their biggest asset. Just come eat dinner.'

'You don't understand how important this report is to me personally though. Will you please just bring my dinner to me like usual?'

The person outside of the door sighs. 'I figured you would ask, so it's right outside the door for you. But don't forget, it's also family game night. I wish you would join us when you're finished.' The person walks away and laughter can be heard downstairs.'

"Cue?"

"Jack? That you?" I grunt. I sit up and hold my head. "What happened?"

"You tell me." I look around and see that we're back at North's palace, in the library.

I shake my head, trying to clear away some of the fogginess. "I don't remember anything but a flash of black and... pink. Isn't it supposed to be white?"

Jack smiles a little, but then turns serious, something I'm still not used to. "After the flash, we saw you fall. Luckily, Sandy got there in time to save you with his sand but..." he trailed off. I came to the conclusion by myself.

"He took an arrow for me?" I whispered.

"Not technically, actually. He sent his sand out to catch you, but while he was focused on that, Eris shot him. The arrowhead and feather-things on the end were a sort of yellowish color. This one isn't as bad, actually. He just sleeps. We have him in one of the spare rooms and if he needs anything, we put a bell next to his bed with a note."

"So, now what?" I ask, turning and placing my feet on the ground, still sitting next to Jack.

"We have to figure out who she will hit next. That's all we CAN do at the moment."

"But we've gone through every darn book in this stupid library and there's nothing here!"

"Well, just from what I've seen, I think there's a small method to her madness. Remember, she's married to Pitch, so she will want to get the people who were the biggest threats out of the way first. She tried getting me, but Tooth got in the way-" He was cut off from North bumbling in.

"Ah, you are awake! Good! We have to get going. We have teeth to collect!" he boomed. Jack groaned next to me, but I was curious.

"Why are we collecting the teeth?" I asked.

"Well, with Tooth out of commission and all of her fairies being captured, there is no one collecting teeth. Come see the damage that has been done by two of our Guardians being gone." He sauntered out of the room and we followed after him. He took us to the globe and I saw how many children we've lost so far.

Almost 95% of the children stopped believing in the Guardians. Wait, how do I know that? I look up at a hole in the ceiling and see the moon. Oh, right. Forgot he could tell me things. I look back at the globe and join the others.

"Well, you know what we gotta do, right?" said Jack, Tooth hanging on his arm as always. I looked at him and asked what.

"We must collect the teeth, like we did last time," North answered. I cocked my head in confusion.

"Since Tooth can' ge' the teeth, we gotta ge' the teeth for 'er," said Bunny, in his thick, Australian accent.

"Ooooh, okay. That makes sense!" I grinned. "Let's go then!"

We made our way back to the sleigh, taking off into the dark night.

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"How many more do we have to do now?" I panted.

"Actually, it pretty much never ends. There's so many kids losing teeth every day. I remember when I was actually the cause-" Jack started.

" 'nough talkin' an' more collectin' or else you'll ge' left behind!" Bunny interrupted.

I smiled, looking at the small bag of teeth that I've collected. We've been out here for a couple of hours already, but I only managed to collect so little.

I must've looked down, because Jack then said, "Don't worry about it. You're new to this and new to your powers still, so it's understandable." I smiled at him and went back to searching for teeth.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After a couple more hours of collecting teeth, North calls us all together again.

"Okay," he bellowed, rubbing his hands together, his large sack of teeth sitting plumply beside him. "We have collected a lot of teeth, and there are still more out there, but we must have seen by now that we cannot get all of them. So, I have new plan!" He pointed to the sky excitedly. "You all remember what next week is, do you not?"

I stared at him, Bunny was looking down, scratching his ears, Jack wasn't even paying attention.

"CHRISTMAS!" We all jumped at the sudden loudness. "We have to go back to my palace and prepare for delivery!"

So everyone grabbed their bags and got back on the sleigh. I just followed them, not knowing what Christmas even was. But as soon as my butt hit the sleigh, I had a sort of vision. It was quick, and small, but enough to give me an idea of who I was before, what Christmas is, and a big headache. I held my head as North snapped the reins and took us back to his palace.

When we went inside, I brought up a tiny detail that we missed.

"Um, North? What are we going to do with the teeth?"

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks and looked at the bags they were carrying. Except for Jack.

"Simple," he said. "We're going to take them back to Tooth's palace. But we can't do that now. We have to start up Christmas. We can put the bags in his office until this whole thing is done, right, North?" Jack grinned at him. North nodded, a little hesitantly though.

That was our first stop of the day. Next, we all split up. North made sure the toys were working in his main workshop, Jack and I helped package the toys, and Bunny threw the packages into North's, seemingly, never-ending sack.

We worked and we worked. Jack kept cracking jokes to pass the time and I was nearly in tears at the end of every one of them. It was nice to be with Jack without Tooth being right next to him. We left her behind, in a spare room, while we collected the teeth. We figured that she would be fine in there while we were working on our deliveries, so Jack went to say hi, then came back. Just to make sure she was okay.

Suddenly, an boom echoed throughout the building and the lights were snuffed out. With it being the dead of night and the Man in the Moon being nowhere in sight, everything got pitch black.

"Oh no..." I whispered.