Mavis strays off from the guardians and gets caught by Mandrake’s Boggan subordinates. They drag her back to Pitch’s lair for her punishment. Merida, Rapunzel, Jack, and Hiccup search for her all day and night until they agreed on trying again the next morning. Hiccup awakens in the middle of the night when Toothless caught a scent of Mother Gothel and the Boggans. He and Hiccup restlessly continue following Gothel without the Guardians knowing.
So on and so forth…this is how Hiccup joined the dark side. I still have to make Jack and Hiccup’s training, Rapunzel, Jack, Hiccup Moments.
I gave Mandrake more screen time.
I will later be posting links to all of the Becoming a Guardian gifs in sequential order.
Thanks to Manny, he long hadn’t felt the impulse to wander back to the edge, looking into the beyond and wondering whether he would fare better out there despite the Grimm that ruled the deepest reaches of the untamed world. And thanks to Manny, here he was again, years stronger and less convinced that stepping outside the confines of civilization would be a death more certain than the long, slow wasting that awaited him within.
He did not take so much as a step further, but neither did he turn back. Instead, he trembled on the thin line he had marked for himself, both yearning for and afraid of either direction, uncertain as he had not been since faint childhood. An abrupt chime pierced the still air, ringing out repeatedly. Jack slipped a hand into his pocket and thumbed a tiny switch. Silence fell once more. He fingered the scroll for a moment, debating the merits of quiet or sound, before retreating again. Shuffling in place, he crouched down on the edge of the flat rooftop, ignoring the shifting layer of grit and crumbled mortar under his shoes. Hunched like a gargoyle yet balanced as nimbly as a fae, the white-haired boy, that freak with the icy eyes and freezing skin, the orphan child choked with so much frost dust that his fingers snapped with sparks of cold, stared blindly into the shadows, trying to muster the indignant anger which had driven him here in the first place.
But the anger slipped from his mind as he wondered, would it really be so bad?
Would it?
Yes, he reminded himself. Rules and restrictions. Hard work and deadlines. And for what?
For Emma.
To prove them wrong.
To be seen. Really seen, for what you truly are...
Jack shook Manny’s voice from his head and clung harder to his base argument.
“Missions and classes and teamwork: that’s not me,” he said to the wind, straightening to look out over the empty world once more. “Whatever I am...I’m not a Hunter.”
Now he had only to tell Manny this.
He didn’t move.
Rather, he didn’t move until a faint sound caught his ear. Frowning, he tilted his head and listened more intently.
Laughter, high and childish.
The frown eased into a faint smile.
Maybe, before Manny, a quick detour. Kids were fun, as long as they didn’t see him to point and gasp and draw away from the Frostbite Boy their mothers had warned them about. Fun was good; the world always seemed a better, simpler place after Jack just let loose for a little while.
The smile strengthened, and he sauntered across the rooftop, kicking off the southern edge as casually as most would hop across a stream.
Before he could fall, the wind swept up through the alleyway below, launching him into the air and carrying him fully across the gap.
He was three roofs along and, by his estimate, very near the source of the lively sounds of children at play when the laughter and shouts ceased. There was another sound, sharp and gravelly.
Then someone screamed, and Jack’s feet hardly touched the slate beneath him as his semblance rushed around him, lifting him over gaps and whirling him around obstacles with such speed and ease he almost seemed to be flying.
A blur of black and white caught his eye. He dropped from the air, ice trailing from his fingertips, and froze an immense Beowolf in its tracks.
Thick rime spiraled out from his feet, crawling over asphalt transformed by chalked lines into a child-sized ball court, crackling across the fur of the lead Beowolf and misting the panting breaths of the pair just behind it. The screeches behind Jack tapered into the cold. He spared a glance over his shoulder.
A little girl with ragged blond hair had fallen. A brown-haired boy, not much older, crouched half-turned over her, hands gripping her elbows as though to either draw her close or help her up. Now they only breathed and stared, as if they were as frozen as the Beowolf Jack had just stopped.
“You’re...” the boy whispered, surprise giving way to an expression Jack couldn’t quite place.
“Frosty!” the little girl interrupted, a smile like golden sunlight breaking through her face.
A pair of rising growls jerked Jack’s attention away from the children. The lead Grim still breathed and had begun shivering under his coating of frost, and the other two looked ready to abandon all caution his sudden appearance had instilled in them.
“Get out of here,” Jack ordered, not taking his eyes off of the prowling Beowolves.
“But—”
“Go, now!”
He thought he heard their retreating footsteps, but couldn’t be sure; his half-shouted command had been taken by the Grim as the signal to attack.
Normally, Jack would have immediately bounded up the walls, bouncing from place to place and generally being the most disorienting nuisance he could possibly make himself. This time, he had two opponents – three if the leader shook free and proved sturdy enough to continue the fight – and couldn’t risk one or more of them ignoring him in favor of slower, easier prey.
So instead of calling upon his semblance to play, Jack reached back and found the handle of Snowstorm.
“What are you doing here?” he asked them, neither expecting nor receiving any answer but the blurred black arc of a clawed hand reaching for his throat.
Then there was a flash of silver so brilliant it was nearly white, and one Beowolf howled as half its arm fell, blood staining the ice and snow slowly building across the ground. The silver spun, clicking, and the second Beowulf’s claws slammed into the long shaft of Jack’s crescent-bladed weapon.
The attack sent him skidding across the slippery ground, but ice was Jack’s realm and he kept his feet just as well as the rough-padded enemy. Winter sparks snapped around his soles; he pushed off on a curve, dancing in long glides around the Grim. Snowstorm whistled through the air, spirals of ice adding bite to its honed edge, and the one-armed Beowulf suddenly found itself with an unprecedented view of its own body.
The lead Grim howled, finally breaking free of its frozen prison, though it staggered against its own cold-deadened limbs for a moment.
It was a moment too long; by the time the Beowulf found its legs, Jack was there, his crescent staff sweeping low across the knees, then up and around and down in a silver whirlwind, trailing cold behind it like a physical presence. The thin sheen of ice it left behind was soon washed away in red, and the Grim fell, yelping in mortal pain even as it stretched and snapped at the boy who downed it. Jack leapt back several paces, turning in midair to search for the last monster, the one he had briefly abandoned in order to finish the leader before it could fully regain its ability to move.
A dark tail flicked away around the corner.
“Oh, no.”
Rushed onwards by the wind of his semblance, Jack followed, bringing Snowstorm to bear before he’d gained any line of sight. One twitch to correct his aim, another to fire –
Lightning, cold blue and crackling with the full force of winter, slammed into the fleeing Grim’s back. It fell in a cloud of fog and static bursts of ice, attempted to rise again, and collapsed fully under another searing burst of blended and augmented dust.
Jack paused, surveying the scene to make sure no threat remained. He was panting – this surprised him, as he didn’t feel tired, but...elated? Hyped? It definitely involved adrenaline, whatever it was.
“You got them!”
His gaze snapped up in surprise. There was that brown-haired boy, running towards him, with his tiny sister tagging along behind. He slowed near the downed Beowulf to give it a proper look-over even as his sneakers edged him in a cautious arc around its body. It didn’t monopolize his attention long; in fact, he’d hardly passed it when his brilliant grin returned to Jack, as though the white-haired ragamuffin was the best thing to come along since some marketing genius thought to sell bread pre-sliced.
“That was awesome! Are you a hunter? You made it snow! Practically in summer!”
“Er – yeah. I mean, to the snow, not—”
“Is that your weapon? What’s it called?”
“Oh, uh, Snowstorm. You really thought that was...awesome?”
The boy nodded in much the same way as an overjoyed puppy wags its tail; so hard his entire body partook in the motion. His grin never wavered, and Jack felt an answering grin stretch the sides of his face and crinkle his eyes. He didn’t notice the icy fractals spreading in languid spirals from beneath his feet until the little girl bent towards them.
“Frosty!”
Jack’s smile went hard and fixed as he remembered.
The ice stopped and slowly began to dissolve into the dark, warm paving.
“Jamie! Sophie! Is that a – oh my god!”
“Mom, we’re okay, a hunter got it and saved us!”
Anything further which the boy might have tried to share was muffled in his mother’s shoulder as she scooped both children close. Jack shuffled vaguely away, wondering if he should just take the opportunity and fly off before things got really uncomfortable.
“You’re a hunter?” the woman asked, looking up before Jack could make good his plans to quietly escape.
“Not exactly. I have some training, but nothing official yet.”
“You’re the frost boy,” she observed next. A flippant reply was already dancing across his tongue when the woman released Jamie enough to hold out her hand.
“Alice Bennett. Thank you, for saving my children.”
Jack swallowed the words that had risen instinctively and started to reciprocate the gesture. He paused when his fingers drew within inches of hers, drawing back without thought. Mrs. Bennett’s hand moved forward and grasped his.
He knew he was cold. He could see her fingers growing pink already. Still she held his hand and, when he finally met her gaze, his eyes.
“Thank you.”
XxX
Manny hadn’t been sure if he’d hear his study door creak open again that night. When it did, he experienced a release of tension he hadn’t been aware of carrying. The retired huntsman immediately slipped a scrap of ribbon in the book he had been reading and looked up.
“I’ll do it. I’ll go to Beacon.”
Manny’s eyebrows climbed toward the smooth crown of his round head.
“What brought this change of heart on, may I ask?”
Jack shrugged, though he couldn’t hide the joy in his face behind the nonchalance of the gesture.
“It’s a long story.”
“Dinner’s on the stove. You could tell me over a meal and before I compose my letter to Headmaster Ozpin,” Manny invited.
“Sure. Just one thing: when you write my registration, I’d like my name filled out...a little differently.”
Queen Marigold helps Rapunzel connect with the forest. She must first be offered pollen to be accepted as a Guardian. She is first hesitant and tries to speak, but there is no response. It's her third day of trying, and she finally has the approval to control and connect with the plants of the forest.
